Re: [NTG-context] Re: Context against XSL

On Fri, Oct 01, 2004 at 12:53:22PM +0200, Nikolai Weibull wrote:

* Hans Hagen [Oct 01, 2004 12:40]:

...

comparisons between the not-taco engines show big differences (also in price) and as soon as extensions start coming into the picture, the 'acclaimed advantage of fo' disappears. Some peeople pay five digit numbers for engines where formulas has to be included as graphic.

Heh, serious? That's incredible. I'm really beginning to doubt the "authoring in XML"-bandwagon's legitimacy. nikolai

You and most of the XML community (I once claimed to be part of that, but have lately tried to distance myself, partly for the reasons being discussed here). The original idea was that XML would be a new and better way to author *Web documents*. Somewhere along the line it morphed into a general-purpose, universal data exchange format, in which capacity it serves reasonably well (though it likely should have been designed differently, had people foreseen how it would actually be used). Meanwhile, a ragged band of diehards continued trying to develop and promote XML specifically as a web technology and/or a document technology, but I think very few people have much hope in that area any more. There was an article on O'Reilly Network's XML.com in July entitled "XML on the Web has Failed"; that may not settle the question, but such a statement would have been unthinkable 2 or 3 years ago. But to get back to the question of XSL: a couple of years ago I was looking for a way to generate print-ready documents from XML. I tried the then-latest version of FOP, which was and maybe still is the most popular open-source XSL-FO processor. I was amazed, after several years of its development by the Apache project, how many features were unimplemented, including some that I considered obvious and important for complex documents (I think, for example, there was no way to do footnotes). In hindsight, this probably shouldn't have been surprising. Print documents are complex, and few people are interested in them, relative to the Web. There probably aren't enough users or interested programmers to support more than a couple of high-quality products in this problem space. Anyway, when I found that FOP wouldn't meet my needs, I started searching for something else--and found ConTeXt. Architecturally, it may not have XSL's Neoclassical tidiness, but it has one huge advantage: it works. -- Matt Gushee When a nation follows the Way, Haven Rock Press Horses bear manure through Englewood, Colorado, USA its fields; books@havenrock.com When a nation ignores the Way, Horses bear soldiers through its streets. --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)