Re: [xml-dev] Formatting Processing Instructions

[Lech Rzedzicki <xchaotic@gmail.com>]

Fortunately I am in a position where I am given free reign as to what
to use and how as long as it works with possibly the least amount of
effort.
On the other hand I had to deal with maintaining FOSI stylesheets in past.

If you're in the position to change this, avoid P-Is, or any approach
that is too prescriptive (for example how will that row height look on
a 3" smartphone screen?)
Normally I would suggest that for 90% of the content use declarative
markup such as para and let the stylesheet (be it CSS, XSL-FO etc)
decide how to render it
For the remaining 10% use an attribute such as rend and allow CSS
properties in there for finer control.
With that approach you get a lot of stuff for free - ie. CSS
properties work out of the box in browsers, but some things may still
be impossible - for example pixel-perfect positioning of text (use
image instead) and that is fine - the manual's recipient wont care or
appreciate such details.


Lech