- From: Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian.rahtz@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>
- Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 16:35:41 +0100 (BST)
- To: xsl-list@mulberrytech.com
- cc: xsl-editors@w3.org
Eduardo Gutentag writes: > I am a bit puzzled by your words. You started this thread by asking > (http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list/archive/msg10922.html) > > --- > why is <table-footer> extended, but > <table-header> basic? why would anyone be able to implement one but > not the other? .... > But if you read the conformance section of the working draft > (http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/slice8.html#section-N54274-Conformance) > you will see that "basic" is intended for applications that need to > support a minimum level of pagination while "extended" is intended > for applications "whose goal is to provide sophisticated pagination." > It's just a matter of what is or might be your application's goal > and or capabilities. Sure, I understand that. I think that what worried me was the apparent division into "basic" and "extended" being based on the capabilities of existing software. I would have expected more objectivity. > I am not sure why you would consider that the various levels of conformance > cripple the system, or target a specific set of software. because the distinction between basic and extended seems blurred. on the one hand, it is a matter of whether or not one needs decent pagination; but on the other hand, it seems that table footers and headers are split apart on the basis of what current software does > The differenciation > between table-header and table-footer that you point out is based on > the acknowledgment that existing implementations (albeit not of XSL ;-) *do* > make a differenciation between one and the other, and therefore future > implementations might also want to make this distinction. I can see the argument, but I find it hard to agree with. What does a theoretical system like XSL have to with current practice? If you *are* being influenced by existing capabilities, I'd like to see considerably more information on the details and the arguments. > While it is not beyond the realm of the possible that the XSL WG has made > mistakes, I think this is not one of them. Possibly I mistook the way XSL FO is going. I saw it as a rewrite of DSSSL, with varioius constraints: a) expressing everthing in XML b) making sure that all the work done on CSS was explicitly referenced and mappped to the relevent part of the new language I assumed that, like DSSSL, XSL FO was designed with no constraints about what was currently possible or implemented. I'm summary, I would argue that the current spec seems to confuse a theoretical "simple vs sophisticated pagination" distinction with a "needed for conformance with current standards vs theoretically achievable distinction. Sebastian
Received on Sunday, 23 April 2000 11:12:23 UTC