Re: Planning to close Print and Page Layout Community Group due to inactivity unless we hear from you

Good morning,

this is Andreas from print-css.rocks.
I started in the publishing sector in the mid-90s and, for whatever
reasons, I became a PrintCSS advocate in the early 2010s.

Let's agree on that every technology has its use cases, its pros and cons,
and in particular its time.

The case against XSL-FO:

- mature but old technology
- not easily approachable
- often knowledge of power in heads of experts
- only a few tools, only one free tool (FOP which is a major piece of trash
since it came to light)

PrintCSS aka CSS Paged media has led to a certain democratization because
PrintCSS is based
on recent and known technology. It's much easier and more approachable and
does not require expert knowledge
(at least not for most of the standard use cases). Meanwhile, we have a
broad range of commercial and free tools that
can also leverage decent web technologies and their standards.

No technology is perfect, no implementation is perfect. However, we have
seem a lot of progress in the PrintCSS
world over the last year and in particular a lot of momentum over the last
years with new tools and new approaches.
Many companies and publishers adopted PrintCSS in various ways
successfully. In particular in niche areas where
XSL-FO was too complicated, too expensive, too hard to maintain, and too
hard for finding experts...democratization of
publishing.

This discussion is not about "Can I do X better with technology A or B",
this is more about high-level topics like approachability and availability
of
technologies, costs, and resources.

For me as (part-time) publishing consultant, I want to work with
approachable and recent technology, I want to  have a recent
bag of tool options.

I understand your perspective (in particular from your background as a
vendor). But your mindset stated here is a 90ish as your
company website renderx.com which has not seen a facelift since the 90s?
Not even responsive. No offense, but companies and publisher
will be sunsetting XSL-FO in the long term. From the business perspective,
I would be afraid.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen | Kind regards
Andreas Jung


Am Do., 16. März 2023 um 00:32 Uhr schrieb Kevin Brown <kevin@renderx.com>:

> Sorry but in my opinion delivered to you as a software vendor and as a
> person who has sat on SGML, DSSSL and other committees (not just some
> random comment) you encapsulated most everything here, broken down:
>
> "document how to migrate from XSL-FO to CSS, even though XSL-FO is still
> actively used"
>
> Why? That is already convoluted in its statement ... which is essentially
> "Document how to move to something else even when the original solution is
> used"
> Used widely I would note, probably at 10,000 companies or more.
>
> Then:
>
> "and even though the CSS WG isn't really able to do page stuff"
>
> Ok. So what you want to do is "Document moving from something that works
> to something that doesn’t work and may/likely never will"
> And IMHO, it never will because they do not care (and frankly they
> shouldn't because they worry about what it looks like to you in a browser,
> they could care less about a printed page. Just hit the print button!"
>
> The entire concept was doomed to failure in my opinion and now it has
> reached that place.
> I do understand that people are thinking web = print or whatever, CSS is
> easier than XSL FO or whatever ... but the original attempt to slam the two
> together was a mistake in the first place.
>
> You want to do something?
> Do XSL FO and enhance it.
> Stop trying to grab the coattails of CSS and think that will work.
>
>
> Kevin Brown
> Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing RenderX, Inc.
> (650) 327-1000 Direct
> (650) 328-8008 Fax
> (925) 395-1772 Mobile
> skype:kbrown01
> kevin@renderx.com
> sales@renderx.com
> http://www.renderx.com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Liam R. E. Quin <liam@fromoldbooks.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2023 2:51 PM
> To: public-ppl@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Planning to close Print and Page Layout Community Group due
> to inactivity unless we hear from you
>
> On Sun, 2023-03-12 at 21:04 +0000, Tony Graham wrote:
> >
> > Do we go gentle into that good night or do we rage, rage against the
> > dying of the light?
>
>
> The city walls crumble. There is ivy growing through the roof of the
> council chamber. But everywhere we can see, shoe-shops flourish.
>
> About the most useful think i can think of would be to document how to
> migrate from XSL-FO to CSS, even though XSL-FO is still actively used, and
> even though the CSS WG isn't really able to do page stuff.
>
> A list of identified gaps (in a wiki?) might be useful input to the CSS WG.
>
> But who among us is willing to devote, say, two hours a week to doing it?
>
> --
> Liam Quin, https://www.delightfulcomputing.com/
> Available for XML/Document/Information Architecture/XSLT/
> XSL/XQuery/Web/Text Processing/A11Y training, work & consulting.
> Barefoot Web-slave, antique illustrations:  http://www.fromoldbooks.org
>
>
>
>