xml-dev - RE: xslv updated

["Gregg Reynolds" <greynolds@greynolds.com>]

(Just to make sure nobody missed the previous caveat:  I recently took a new
job, no longer work for Datalogics, and no longer sit on the XSL WG.)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xml-dev@xml.org [mailto:owner-xml-dev@xml.org]On Behalf Of
> Sebastian Rahtz
> Sent: Monday, June 19, 2000 6:21 AM

...

> Following DSSSL, they decouple the stylesheet from the
> formatter. Which makes it impossible to implement
>
>  1) a design which says "captions are centered unless they are longer
>     than one line, in which case they are ragged right"
>
>  2) a cross-reference system which says "figure 1 on the opposite
>     page" or "figure1 on p.56", depending on where it floats to

I don't follow you here.  Why does such decoupling make these impossible?
Surely it is possible to express such compositional constraints in the
stylesheet, and if you can express them and implementor should be able to
make it happen.

>
> You express it excellently. FO follows DSSSL in the reduced
> expressiveness. So that stops you implementing the highest quality.

It may be so with these two specific languages, but I don't think it's true
in principle.

>
> But if the XSL cannot talk to the formatter, how can it base other
> style decisions dependent on what the page floating came up with?


In principle it should be possible to express such constraints in a totally
declarative manner, with no need to "talk to the formatter".  But this view
is based on the idea that a composition engine is really just a specialized
constraint solver.  Most typesetting software probably doesn't operate like
that, or at least is not modeled in that way.

Gee, I wonder if I should mention that I haven't looked at XSL:FO for about
6 months?  Nah, that'll be obvious. ;)

-gregg


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