Re: ITP: xslj, a XSL processor (XSL is one of the stylesheet format of XML)
>Le Monday 28 June 1999, à 10 h 44,
>Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore.com> écrivit au service d'aide :
>> Yes, well, DSSSL is ISO and it may lapse. CSS and XSL are W30.
>BTW, this is a good reason against DSSSL. ISO standards are not legally
>distributable, not even in our non-free section. The authoritative CSS and XSL
>specs, on the opposite, can be packaged for Debian.
According to data I've seen, since goverment funds were used in the
production of the standard, the standard is in the public domain, and
legally distributable. However, I am not sure. Certainly, it's
publically viewable at a number of locations.
>For the same reason (freedom of specs), I prefer XML over full-SGML.
It's really an arguable point that the steering committee of the W3O
(include MS and others) is really all that responsive to the community
itself. W3O standards are not put under DFSG copyrights, either! See
the flames against the W3O on the xml-dev and xsl lists.
>But, if you don't write DSSSL yourself (congratulations for those who
>can), the situation is far from perfect. For instance, DocBook's
>DSSSL stylesheets for TeX produces jadetex, not Latex, so you cannot
>use the ordinary LaTeX packages you're used to, such as those who
>handle French typography. I'm sure there are good technical reasons
>for that, but it's a serious problem...
Definately the TeX backend in particular, but your arguments are
precisely the things that are right about the TeX backend and JadeTeX.
For one thing, yes, it does use LaTeX, yes, it does use babel and all
the other latex i18n stuff, no, you never want to "use packages you're
used to" anyway because you aren't really intended to edit the TeX
produced by the TeX/FOT backend.
Like I said, it is flawed -- partially because jade backends are hard
to write and maintain (i.e., the TeX FOT backend has some problems,
esp. with tables), partly because it *is* using LaTeX I think a lot of
problems occur there, i.e., every damn bug in babel.sty will bring it
down. Rather than emitting a latex version of the FOT, the backend
should produce raw TeX formatting commands, rather akin to just
emitting .dvi or PDF or whatever. Otherwise you gotta negotiate, for
instance, between the LaTeX page model and the DSSSL page model.
Let me give you the the "DSSSL challenge":
in what other open, free system can you write a single stylesheet and
produce output for multiple print-ready backends, including PDF, PS,
DVI, RTF, and HTML?
Right now there is only one answer: DSSSL.
--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>
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