Re: DSSSL style editing (was: RE: Positioning...)

Jon Bosak wrote:
> This is the key to understanding how DSSSL style editors will get
> implemented.  In PostScript, all halfway decent tools create files
> that any PostScript output device will render correctly.  Similarly,
> any conformant DSSSL application will be able to handle a DSSSL
> stylesheet correctly, regardless of the tool used to create the
> stylesheet.  In both cases, the thing that is produced is a program
> (one procedural, the other functional), and in both cases, it is
> unreasonable to expect that documents or stylesheets will be freely
> interchangeable among editing tools; the guaranteed interchangeability
> is among different output processes.

I don't fully agree, Jon.

Once we have figured out the 95% of stylesheet features that 95% of all
people need (i.e. more than CSS but substantially less than "anything 
you want to do"), we can define an editable, interchangable DSSSL subset 
and even a DSSSL class library. In fact, simply by defining more flow
objects to handle the cases people need handled, we can make actual
programming completely unnecessary for the same set of style features that
will be available in "CSS 98".

Moreover, I think that we can partition even individual style sheets so
that the subset that can be edited by WYSIWYG editors and the other, complex
stuff can be left alone until viewing time. Of course the WYSIWYG editor could
have a fully rendered document view, but some aspects of that view would
be unchangable. For instance if every other word was blue, you couldn't change
that unless the style sheet offer provided "hooks" like (define *lite-color*)
or (define *skip-words*).

 Paul Prescod

Received on Wednesday, 5 February 1997 00:46:50 UTC