Dirar Bougatef wrote:
Does anyone have informations about tex macro packages and their advantages over XSL (previously known as XSL-FO) ?
I have read somewhere that tex is a good implementation of the XSL standard !
I think this is in regard that tex thinks in matter of boxes (Which is the equivalent of XSL blocks). I this case, is the difference between the two in the fact that at the end tex and macros are only algorithms for typesetting blocks automatically ?
xsl is mostly a specification, and there are program soutthere that implement parts of is. The page model that xsl uses is not that advanced. Also, because you more or less make up the page, you also sort of disable all kind of clever things that batch processors like tex + macropackages may do. This means that xsl (fo) is suited for a certain range of typesetting tasks. From my experience your expectations should not be that high with regards to complex layouts. I'm on and off implementing an fo engine (foxet) and run into fuzziness with regards to the specs (a bad omen is that that there i could not find a good manual and the ones i have are made up rather poorly, which indicated that we're not so much dealing with high end typesetting, but with regular batchprocessing of not too complex documents). Recently i've been playing with css (from which xsl inherits much, which does not add to a clear design imo) and i'm surprised that browsers are so different that one ends up hacking around as much as one would using tex -) In many ways xsl is driven by the web, and not by real typesetting (is my guess). paper and screen are different things. What you use depends on what you need it for. For a long time, the midset of designers has been shaped by what page maker, quark, etc can and cannot do (therefore all those ragged right docs, where the limitations have become the standard). I fear that in the next couple of years the limited possibilities of for instance xsl will bring down the standards (if it can't be done, one will just lower the demands), which also fits in the short lifecycle of most documents. So, what to use when: - here i find that using tex directly (using the context xml parser) in most cases is rather efficient; the problem is always in getting (frequently inconsistent) designs done. In that respect my motto has become 'the problem does not change' - xslt is nice for preprocessing and manipulating documents and often one can get away with clean coding - some scripting is often needed as well (for instance in order to add typographical detail, which is rather easy to do with regexps in scripting languages) - xsl (fo), well for the moment i see it as a kind of 'placed xml'; when customers want us to use it, we'll do it (gives a feeling of independence), but in most cases using some direct mapping onto tex is not only easier (cheaper) but also gives a bit more control. It all depends on the design. - so: just use the best of all worlds (which is what xml is about: it's consistent -when used all right- and it can be transformed; interestingly there are quite some organizations out there that bind themselves to just one kind of xml handling app thereby contradicting the concept. In de time i want to write down something on these matters. Hans btw, there is a special mailing list for foxet; a preliminary version is in the alpha zip ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------