Peter B. West wrote:
The last assessment of the situation that I can recall on this list was that property handling is working satisfactorily so there is no need to pay any attention to it. Yes, really.
I don't think this is quite right. It is a matter of priorities. Property handling works, layout does not.
OK. Except that I would say, "Property handling works as far as it goes." If you want a conforming implementation, property handling has to be complete.
I can't speak for others, but my hangup on alt-design properties that has prevented progress is that it so far has been presented as inextricably linked to pull-parsing and the other parts of alt-design. Until either 1) the case for that approach has been made more satisfactorily than it has until now, or 2) alt-design property handling can be unbundled from pull-parsing, it really is too much to ask to take the alt-design approach.
Not if it works. That is a bone of contention, of course. One of the problems with the Rec, I think, is that only by attempting an implementation do you gain an understanding of it.
Especially with the FO Tree isolated, I am glad to have someone step in and improve its performance, if (and only if) we nail down its API to the rest of FOP so that the rest of FOP doesn't have to know what is going on here.
Peter -- Peter B. West <http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/resume.html>
