Re: Does the Crystal Goblet apply?

On 4 January 2014 13:04, Tony Graham <tgraham@mentea.net> wrote:
> On Thu, January 2, 2014 12:54 pm, Dave Pawson wrote:
>> Note the phrasing Tony?
>>
>> On 2 January 2014 12:42, Tony Graham <tgraham@mentea.net> wrote:
>>> On Thu, January 2, 2014 6:49 am, Dave Pawson wrote:
>>>> Just picking up one scope point Arved
>>> ...
>>>> IF (big if without a list of deliverables) we produce something like
>>>> XSL-FO
>>>> from this group, how do you see UI design coming into this groups
>>>> scope?
>>>
>>> The difficulty I have with saying that we will produce XSL-FO 2.0 or
>>> even
>>> a 1.2 is that we have no reasonable expectation that it will be
>>> implemented.
>>
>> I did not say an xsl-fo 2.0, I said, and meant, something similar in tone?
>> I.e. a 'what' type of document, rather than how.
>
> I don't understand.  Can you elaborate?

I did not mean to generate xsl-fo 2.0. Merely to specify a means of
doing what fo does?


>
>> W3C have (rightly or wrongly) define xsl-fo as dead today. There has
>> to be a take away from that?
>>   With its background and (original) author, that might point to something
>> simpler.
>
> Again, I don't understand.

A POV - XSL-FO is too complex a language (written largely by JC which
should mean something) hence users perhaps would be happy with
something simpler / easier to understand.




> I have said in conversation before that XSL-FO is a bit like an 'assembly
> language' for formatting, so you might think in terms of making a
> 'higher-level language'.
>
> All I thought I was proposing previously was a set of functions or named
> templates for simplifying the page master part of things, but I wouldn't
> stop anybody expanding on that idea.

Stepping back, do you think that would make the spec easier to understand?
IMHO it's not just page masters / selections, it's closer to the whole
shooting match
that needs a review, putting it perhaps too strongly, it simply
doesn't match with
what CSS offers, a dumb syntax that (nearly) does what FO does?




>
>>> Or to SWIG [1] xmlroff or even do Antenna House's work for them and SWIG
>>> AHF just so there's a XSL-FO formatter available to programmers working
>>> in
>>> languages other than C or Java?
>>
>> Personal view... Look forward 10 years. Will there still be
>> implementations
>> from which to leverage? No more than a gut feeling, but I just don't think
>> of that as a productive route Tony?
>
> The easy answer is that there will be companies using it because it's
> still baked into their processes, but I don't know that there will be that
> many sales of new XSL-FO processors unless the tide turns somehow.

A more moderate view on what I said?


>
> The point I made a while ago is that I'm not opposed to XSL-FO being
> overtaken by something better, just not happy to sit and wait and not be
> able to make better output until such time as that happens.


Which I might read as 'use FO until something better comes along'?
Would a dummy layer atop FO meet those needs?

regards



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

Received on Saturday, 4 January 2014 13:28:09 UTC