Re: Does the Crystal Goblet apply?

On 4 January 2014 12:47, Tony Graham <tgraham@mentea.net> wrote:
> On Thu, January 2, 2014 3:45 pm, Arved Sandstrom wrote:

>> I think you hit on a central point, which is education: tutorials, for
>> example. XSL-FO is not suffering low rates of adoption because it's more
>> difficult to use than other technologies, it's suffering because it
>> hasn't been sold that well.
>
> And if it's not officially part of the OWP and if the W3C is concerned
> about pushing the CSS 'brand', it won't be sold at all by the W3C.
>
> Writing tutorials and 'interface' libraries doesn't have the cachet of
> writing a new spec, but it may be more practical at this point.  However,
> I don't know how well it fits with your (I think) earlier point that
> developers don't grok XSLT to begin with or with Kai's point about ending
> up having to tweak the FO files by hand.

Backing up a bit. Arved has a valid point here.
IMHO DSSSL bombed (at least partially) due to lack of 'education'
(read usable documentation).
XSL-FO was written by the same person, with the same intellect,
using not dissimilar jargon/terminology?

Is there mileage in looking at syntactic sugar for FO?
Generate some 'simpler' user interface or means of generating FO
and present that along with educational material?

Just a thought for the new year.


.... What it omits is the "FO doesn't do fancy" that some users want.






-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
Docbook FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk

Received on Saturday, 4 January 2014 13:15:17 UTC