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On Fri, 2 Aug 2002, J.Pietschmann wrote:
> XSLFO obviously wasn't defined by programmers. :-/
Yo la tengo.
XSLFO is an excellent example. One man's density is another man's
distillation. That application was defined by people who have set type
or worked with systems that do, including a few programmers. I spent a
weekend with the candidate rec and slapped it on my resume confident that
I would be able to use it efficiently and that confidence has been borne
out. All XML applications should be so transparent to their domain
specialists.
I can't do everything I could with Datalogics (I made that stinker sing, I
tell you, Len.) but it admirably embodies the 80/20 rule and makes wise
choices for defaults. Given the existence of open implementations, I am
confident I can make up the 20 as necessary. I am looking forward to
implementing some dynamic scaling of glyphs to available space, for
example.
I suggest that much of the perceived difficulty of the this and
similar tools can be placed upon the faulty application of markup to the
problem domain. In the light of proper markup XPath becomes elegant, XSLT
concise and FO a positive dream to work with.
Working against the common species of flat, data-driven, wire-format
dialects the utility of these tools deteriorates rapidly. I do tire of
keening about document order processing and proper parentage, but the clue
remains elusive for many.
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Mike Haarman
mhaarma@socsci.umn.edu
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