"Peter B. West" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb am 18.05.2004 11:57:38:
> I am awe-struck that you have achieved so much in that period. How much > of the Rec have you implemented? Peter, it really helps if you have a strong background on PostScript, PDF and fonts as well as text formatting. Also, I can be very efficient if I can do it alone or if I can decide how it's done, but I don't have the patience or talent for discussing technical concepts in writing. Why write when you can code? Yes, I know, this is a personal deficiency, but it seems like I'm stuck with it. Also, we shall have to see how great everything is when it's done. I won't judge right now. It feels right, but I will only be sure of it when it's done. Besides performance issues, I still find new things/aspects in the recommendation that I didn't notice or understand so far. I have to confess that understanding the XSL-FO recommendation has been my greatest intellectual challenge in this project so far... Some sketches of what my formatter does/is capable of now: Architecture: - can do single-pass or multi-pass processing or selective multi-pass - uses push-processing with pull-processing in some places - *designed* to handle all requirements of the rec. - designed to be able to provide good error handling (worded this way, because right now, it sucks, like in FOP...) Rec aspects: - basic formatting stuff works - property handling works - shorthand properties work - expression parser works - table formatting works but still sucks regarding border handling - references, links fully work - keeps and breaks work, but no resolution algorithm so far - bookmark stuff from XSL 1.1 draft - footnotes work - No floats so far - only rudimentary image support (only PNG so far) - inline formatting is pretty rudimentary right now. - no automatic hyphentation - only default orientation and writing modes Most of these aspects, though, have an attribute here and there that's not yet implemented or not completely implemented. I have focused on things that I either need for our customers, or that I wanted to do early to validate the design. So right now I can do most difficult things but not many of the simple things. For example, I could do page-number-citations before I could do more than 1 font. 8-) To make all of this really, really work for users, a lot of testing and tedious coding needs to be done. We will have to sort that out now. By the way: the RenderX test suite documents are a very good starting point to find out how much of the spec a formatter can handle. They really do nasty things (this is absolutely meant as a compliment). Bye, Arnd -- Arnd Beißner Cappelino Informationstechnologie GmbH "Peter B. West" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb am 18.05.2004 11:57:38: > Arnd, > > I am awe-struck that you have achieved so much in that period. How much > of the Rec have you implemented? > > Peter > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > So what happened was: I now have an XSL formatter that is in my estimation > > further > > along than the FOP redesign and that does most things that 0.20.5 does and > > a lot of > > things that 0.20.5 does not. I confess that so far, I did borrow the > > TrueType font > > reader from FOP. What am I going to do with it? Well, it's not really > > decided yet. > > The most likely scenario is to make it a commercial product. BTW: why was > > I fast? > > I'm good (like you), I had experience in many of the areas involved, and - > > very > > important - I didn't need to discuss my architectural decisions because I > > did it > > alone. I had fun. > > -- > Peter B. West <http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/resume.html>
