xml-dev - Re: The problem with typography (with or without flow objects)

[Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian.rahtz@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>]

Eve L. Maler writes:

 > production system that uses FOs to increase efficiency and interoperability 
 > will probably continue in the direction of worrying about turnaround while 
 > giving shorter shrift to page beauty.  This isn't guaranteed, of course, 
 > but can you imagine pumping RTF out of your FO-based system and then going 
 > through and hand-fixing 2-3 items per page to your satisfaction, *each* 
 > time you publish?  Only marketing-ish material gets this treatment these

No, but I can imagine using PIs to hard-wire instructions to the
formatter. Having actually *done* a book using FOs, I know it
works. We put in PIs to force page breaks in the formatter, for
instance.

 > Well, no.  They had no broken type, but their content was a few weeks more 
 > "stale" than the software they described.  Our Read Me First documents were 
 > *huge* in those days.  According to our customers, this was not "better"; 
 > it was worse than slightly less lovely documents that had fewer errors.

It seems to be a disease of the computer industry to rush things to
market. Who else would ever do this? Does your car have a ReadMe.First
document? your video player? It's hard to accept that a few weeks is
important in the life of a serious bit of software. Isnt it indicative
of firefight bugfixing?

So tell us, by the way, are Sun embracing FOs?

Sebastian


***************************************************************************
This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers.
To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@xml.org&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev
List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
***************************************************************************