xml-dev - RE: FOs again

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

Ashvil writes:
 > Oops, All this talk about how great the formatting capabilities of XSL
 > FO lead me to believe that XSL FO is designed as replacement for PDF,
 > for documents that needed the high presentation quality, which are
 > currently distributed on the web via the PDF format. If memory serves
 > me right, when XSL FO was first presented, this was the claim made.

If it was made, it could never have been justified. I don't recall FO
ever being anything other than DSSSL-like, where page and line breaks
were left to an undefined formatting engine. PDF is absolutely fixated 
on fidelity of rendering, FO is at a higher level. Some might argue
(I have done :-}) that it interposes an unwanted and damaging layer in 
a route from XML to print.

 > What I want is to write a document that has HTML, Vector graphics and
 > Voice annotations and view/print that document on a variety of devices
 > like PC, EBook, Printer, etc. I am still not sure how XSL FO will make
 > that happen :-(

because you will write a transformation that turns all the elements in 
your various DTDs into a common formatting language, and your PC,
ebook and printer will all have rendering engines to make best sense
of it. You don't, of course, *want* the page fidelity that PDF
provides, in that situatiom, you want `equivalent rendering', which is 
what FO is all about.

sebastian


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