Glen Mazza wrote:
--- Victor Mote <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
...
You've mentioned before, I believe, there was some things you wished to do to improve the fonts. That may be good--because most of us have not researched them.
The font work has to get thrown away. It is useless without configuration, and there is no way I'm going to try to figure out what the team wants on that issue. And actually it is pretty useless without a working layout system. Jeremias knows at least as much about fonts as I do, and can probably make faster progress with me inactive.
If LayoutStrategy survives reasonably intact, I am much inclined to try to complete the port of the pioneer LS.
I'd rather you not. I don't want to have to maintain the 0.20.x layout strategy in addition to the 1.0 strategy in 1.0. The committers and contributors (Simon and Chris, in particular) are happy working on the improving 1.0 layout and wish to remain with it.
Recent patches (hyphenation, borders) to 1.0 LS have made 0.20.x even more behind. Also, the 1.0 Area Tree and Renderers are incompatible with 0.20.x LS, I don't want their architectures changed in order to accomodate it.
Those who wish to use the 0.20.x layout strategy can continue to run 0.20.x.
Let the decision to bring in that LS be with the ones who will have to maintain it. As for me, getting one LS right is more than enough work.
For the sake of brevity and peace, I will ignore the factual and analytical errors here, and simply say "Thanks! That certainly makes my life easier."
You have as yet only Glen's opinion about your pioneer LS proposal. It might be worthwhile to wait for others to express theirs.
It makes me realize again that maybe I was the one pulling against the flow....
Having always pulled against the flow, I feel qualified to comment on this. The Apache projects and subprojects like to describe themselves as communities. I don't see that as meaning a gang, where everyone wears the same "colours" and effectively surrenders identity to the collective. At the other end would be a collection of developers amongst whom no agreement on direction could be reached, and who each pursued a separate line of development. This would render any productive collaboration impossible. I think Apache communities necessarily fall somewhere in between these extremes.
Obviously, I believe there is room for serious individual differences in approach within FOP, and by extension, within other Apache communities, although this will vary with the maturity of both the codebase and the Recommendation(s) of which it is an implementation. A mature, widely used and comprehensive implementation of a stable Recommendation seems to offer little room for alternative approaches.
FOP is not a mature, stable and comprehensive implementation of XSL 1.0, and XSL 1.1 is out in Working Draft, albeit without radical changes. I don't think it is surprising that there are serious differences of approach. I have explained my own motivations on a number of occasions. The bottom line, though, is that I believe in the approach I am taking, and I believe that I, or rather, the design itself, will eventually persuade others.
This last part is easier said than done, for very simple reasons. I may have mentioned before that only I, for most of the time, and Jeremias for part of the time, have been able to work full-time on FOP. Everyone else has a job around which he or she has to work. Given the severe time limits, and the difficulty of coming to terms with 1) the Recommendation, 2) the maintenance branch, and 3) HEAD, it is not surprising that faced with a major change of design direction, most people just don't have the time or energy to try to come to terms with it.
That doesn't make alternative approaches worthless. Alt.design's property handling is now bearing some fruit in HEAD, of which I am very glad. That it took so long for this to happen is unfortunate but understandable.
The bottom line, it seems to me, is that if you believe in what you are doing, go ahead and do it. The main reason I got to be a committer is that Nicola Ken Barozzi asked why my code was being kept on my ISP. He said that anyone had a right to fork the code, or words to that effect, IIRC. It's a lonely path until you do manage to persuade others, but if you believe in it, back your judgement.
...
Perhaps, in light of this, it may be worthwhile to abandon LayoutStrategy entirely. That would solve Jeremias's problem that started this thread.
Peter -- Peter B. West <http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/resume.html>
