Re: Customer requirement, a critque

Am 24.02.2013 um 22:23 schrieb Arved Sandstrom <arved.sandstrom@magiclampsoftware.net>:

> I think my thinking aligns with Patrick, high-level. Where I may differ - probably do - based in having been a programmer since the mid-70's, is that we can provide a more interactive solution based on FO. We just have to provide more control over the formatting process.


I'd be very interested in seeing a theoretical model how for example requirement 4,5 or 6 will be typeset with (a future version of) XSL-FO. How do you get renderer feedback?

AFAICS the current standard workflow for XML to PDF with XSL-FO is:

A) create "enriched" XML from a data source and layout instructions, possibly with XSLT or some other program.
B) put this enriched XML into the renderer
C) get the PDF and be happy :)

so a strict  A -> B -> C model. IMO you need a very close interaction between A and B to do more advanced layout. It would then be more something like this:

  A -> B -> A -> B -> A -> B -> A -> B -> C

And then I have a hard time to see how this can be compared to existing XSL-FO 1.1 workflows.


(additional note:)
And by my exaggerated comment that XSL-FO is a dead end, I just want to point out that the computational model (= no renderer feedback) does not work for the more advanced requirements. I really do see the usefulness of XSL-FO and I think having a 2.0 standard is reasonable), but XSL-FO is in the same layout class of Markdown, HTML and other simple formatting languages. I.e user creates contents + layout wishes + renders it and hopes that the outcome will be 'all right'. I think we can do better and agree on a different class of layout engines.




Patrick Gundlach
speedata
Berlin, Germany
+49 30 57705055
http://speedata.github.com/publisher/

Received on Monday, 25 February 2013 06:33:02 UTC