xml-dev - Re: xslv/xcss

[Peter Murray-Rust <peter@ursus.demon.co.uk>]

At 09:43 PM 6/19/00 -0400, Amy Lewis wrote:
>First things first: it appears that I have (again) presented my
>opinions with far too little tact.

If it's a consolation I was called a "bellwether" [= "a rough raucous
fellow"] on the XML-SIG group. Passion is a valuable attribute.

>
>With regard to the xslv proposal: feedback, both on the list and off,
>seems to indicate that there's at least a modicum of interest in what
>might be done in this fashion, but the consensus appears to be that the
>CSS vocabulary ought to be used for it, rather than a new one (even if
>the new one casts itself as a "rectification" of the old).  So I'm
>going to revise what's there, moving the xcss appendix into the main
>document, and letting the proposal for more ordered naming wither away,
>just as the state has done.
>
><grin/>
>
>My other self-appointed task for the week is to implement, using the
>proposal, a style sheet both sufficiently useful and sufficiently
>complex to show something approaching proof of concept.  I'll put up
>another pointer as soon as that happens, but I have a day job.
>
>However, any additional comments would be welcome.  Also, a thank you
>to those who took the time to look at the proposal; analog shows enough
>traffic to make taking it forward at least a little longer worthwhile.
>
XML-DEV has a strong tradition of exploring solutions in parallel with
official W3C efforts. 	
- SAX took place alongside the DOM and forms a worthy complement. 
- XSchema was a project to create DTD functionality in XML syntax. It has
certainly informed the current XML Schema working group

- SML is a project originating on XML-DEV to explore a "simple subset of XML".

various other discussions have informed the W3C activities in considerable
measure including namespaces, HTML, etc. I would expect that some of the
XSL WG were aware of the current discussions.

Personally I would value an activity that helped CSS and XML (including
FOs) interoperate more than they do at present. I find it frustrating to:
	- read an HTML DOM and not be able to extract the CSS information with
standard XML tools. There is no easy way to transform HTML+CSS into (say)
XSL-FO.
	- read an SVG file and not be able to parse the style attribute values
into XML [Parsing of path is another concern - but not directly related to
FOs].

If there isn't already, there needs to be a detailed account of
equivalences and transformations within the vocabularies and there also
needs to be an API for CSS (cf either DOM or SAX).

If you look back in the (pre-OASIS) archives you will see how these various
problems were tackled by members of the list and that will give hints as to
how to go ahead. It's probably a good idea to take the details offline and
report back as appropriate. I would expect you would get support and that
the exercise - whatever its findings - would be useful to current members
and to W3C spec designers.

	P.
	


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