Re: storing info in XSL-FO: new issue? [was: Draft TAG Finding:...]

On Fri, 2002-08-09 at 13:43, Bert Bos wrote:

>>  4) Section 1, par. 3. "[...] document that consists of XSL Formatting
>>  Objects, XHTML table mark-up, SVG diagrams, and MathML equations." Such
>>  a document will probably never exist.
>>

I'm not so sure. PassiveTeX can recognize MathML markup in XSL-FO. 
FOP can recognize SVG in XSL-FO. It's entirely possible we may one 
day have a processor that recognizes all three at once. XSL-FO really 
doesn't cover the presentational range that SVG and MathML do. A 
document that includes text, pictures, and equations really needs all 
three.

MathML has two vocabularies: presentation and content. Only the 
presentation half is well supported by current software. SVG is 
really nothing but presentation, even more than XSL-FO. For example, 
a table of numbers is much more repurposible than an SVG picture that 
shows a pire chart or a line graph of the numbers.

XHTML tables probably wouldn't be included, both because XSL-FO has 
its own tables syntax and because XSL-FO and HTML serve the same 
purpose: formatting text for presentation to a human reader. You'd 
pick one or the other but not both.

I do not think XSL-FO is any more or less semantic than HTML. It is 
more complex and more powerful; but there's no true semantic 
difference between a fo:block and an HTML div or a fo:table and HTML 
table. The same arguments being made for deprecating XSL-FO on the 
Web equally well apply to HTML. I think that's a non-starter.
-- 

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| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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Received on Friday, 16 August 2002 08:59:54 UTC