RE: Sun XSL Formatter
Patrick Dean Rusk wrote at 17 Dec 2002 17:40:11 -0500: Perhaps Tony knows better, but I have a potentially plausible explanation for Sun being secretive about their project: it may not initially have been intended for eventual open source development. In other words, it could be a failed internal project to create a commercial product. No. Regards, Tony Graham XML Technology Center - Dublin Sun Microsystems Ireland Ltd Phone: +353 1 8199708 Hamilton House, East Point Business Park, Dublin 3x(70)19708 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
Then I retract the suggestion. Pat -Original Message- From: Tony Graham [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 8:36 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Sun XSL Formatter Patrick Dean Rusk wrote at 17 Dec 2002 17:40:11 -0500: Perhaps Tony knows better, but I have a potentially plausible explanation for Sun being secretive about their project: it may not initially have been intended for eventual open source development. In other words, it could be a failed internal project to create a commercial product. No. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
But it was plausible. :-) -Original Message- From: Patrick Dean Rusk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: December 18, 2002 12:51 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Sun XSL Formatter Then I retract the suggestion. Pat -Original Message- From: Tony Graham [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 8:36 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Sun XSL Formatter Patrick Dean Rusk wrote at 17 Dec 2002 17:40:11 -0500: Perhaps Tony knows better, but I have a potentially plausible explanation for Sun being secretive about their project: it may not initially have been intended for eventual open source development. In other words, it could be a failed internal project to create a commercial product. No. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
-Original Message- From: Tony Graham [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: December 16, 2002 12:23 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Sun XSL Formatter Arved Sandstrom wrote at 14 Dec 2002 15:05:05 -0400: No bitterness at all, actually, Peter. It takes a bit of wind out of my sails, sure, since xmlroff is so similar to the project that Eric Bischoff and myself were working on. Tony has certainly been aware of that for quite a long time - I don't understand why the secrecy, myself, seeing as how we are now looking at an OSS donation anyway. Sun policy, not personal policy. I assure you that there are many steps, and many signatures, required when a large corporation makes an open source donation. Purely because it is a large corporation making the donation and not an individual contributor, there is a lot of due diligence to be done. If a project can't pass all the criteria, it won't be made public. Since a project intended for open souce may not make it to open source, it is perhaps better to say nothing until the due diligence is completed (or, in this case, very nearly completed). The alternative -- announcing an intention to make a public source donation -- risks the project not passing the criteria and risks later accusations of vapourware or accusations of lack of commitment to open source when the project can't be made public. That's why I couldn't say anything about the formatter in the lead up to XML 2002: any of a number of people -- not just engineers and engineering managers -- could have vetoed the donation for any of a number of reasons, and I would have just had to withdraw from the conference without another word being said. I actually know that. I was just blowing off steam. :-) I'd be bitter if I were so arrogant as to think of myself as being upstaged. :-) That's not the case. I am quite familiar with the spec, and there are now a number of competing efforts. None of which are quite accurate. So there is room for more competition. Alternatively, I may talk to Tony and Eric and see if we can assist. Part of why it is written in C is so it doesn't compete with FOP for developers. Arved took the wind out of my sails for a while when he announced his SourceForge project, so wind taking runs both ways. I would be pleased if Arved and/or Eric would consider assisting with the project. Frankly, I would be pleased if *anybody* assisted with the project, but Arved and Eric would be a bonus. Eric will have to weigh in himself. I think he is partial to C++. I am partial to C, and said that earlier this year; it was my original intention to go with C. I've been dormant on xslfoproc for a while; work has not permitted much OSS for me at all. I may have time coming up; it would be a pleasure to help out. I also concur that it would be nice to have Eric involved. I see no reason for competition. A single decent open-source C or C++ implementation would be great. Incidentally, my comments about potentially having had to consider the adoption of this project into Apache still stand. It is no reflection on the project, or on you, Tony. It is a personal philosophical stance - yes, company donations have provided the ASF with fine software, but there is a downside. Arved - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
Perhaps Tony knows better, but I have a potentially plausible explanation for Sun being secretive about their project: it may not initially have been intended for eventual open source development. In other words, it could be a failed internal project to create a commercial product. Sun's history is, after all, replete with such scenarios (as anyone who watched all the best OpenStep applications get bought up and deep-sixed by Sun knows), though not all failures result in open source contributions. One hopes that the due diligence process Tony describes ascertains properly whether it is worth going down the design path already chosen by the code base, unlike, perhaps, the initial Netscape browser source contributions. Patrick Rusk - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
On Sat, 2002-12-14 at 20:01, Victor Mote wrote: Peter S. Housel wrote: Looks like they want to donate it to Gnome, not Apache. AFAIR, the BSD license is pretty incompatible with the Apache license. One of the reasons that the xmlroff announcement doesn't change my commitment to FOP is that, for my interests anyway, the Apache license is superior. Others are that it is not written in Java, and only runs on Sun-supported operating systems. It almost seems like Java was bypassed because it runs on Microsoft operating systems. There are other deficiencies that I think are probable, but we won't know until we get to play with it. Personally I also consider the integration with xerces, xalan, cocoon, forrest, batik, avalon to be quite important. I definitely intend to keep plugging away at FOP. Victor Mote - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
Arved Sandstrom wrote at 14 Dec 2002 15:05:05 -0400: No bitterness at all, actually, Peter. It takes a bit of wind out of my sails, sure, since xmlroff is so similar to the project that Eric Bischoff and myself were working on. Tony has certainly been aware of that for quite a long time - I don't understand why the secrecy, myself, seeing as how we are now looking at an OSS donation anyway. Sun policy, not personal policy. I assure you that there are many steps, and many signatures, required when a large corporation makes an open source donation. Purely because it is a large corporation making the donation and not an individual contributor, there is a lot of due diligence to be done. If a project can't pass all the criteria, it won't be made public. Since a project intended for open souce may not make it to open source, it is perhaps better to say nothing until the due diligence is completed (or, in this case, very nearly completed). The alternative -- announcing an intention to make a public source donation -- risks the project not passing the criteria and risks later accusations of vapourware or accusations of lack of commitment to open source when the project can't be made public. That's why I couldn't say anything about the formatter in the lead up to XML 2002: any of a number of people -- not just engineers and engineering managers -- could have vetoed the donation for any of a number of reasons, and I would have just had to withdraw from the conference without another word being said. I'd be bitter if I were so arrogant as to think of myself as being upstaged. :-) That's not the case. I am quite familiar with the spec, and there are now a number of competing efforts. None of which are quite accurate. So there is room for more competition. Alternatively, I may talk to Tony and Eric and see if we can assist. Part of why it is written in C is so it doesn't compete with FOP for developers. Arved took the wind out of my sails for a while when he announced his SourceForge project, so wind taking runs both ways. I would be pleased if Arved and/or Eric would consider assisting with the project. Frankly, I would be pleased if *anybody* assisted with the project, but Arved and Eric would be a bonus. Regards, Tony Graham XML Technology Center - Dublin Sun Microsystems Ireland Ltd Phone: +353 1 8199708 Hamilton House, East Point Business Park, Dublin 3x(70)19708 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sun XSL Formatter
Arved Sandstrom [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Well, Java or C or C++ or Haskell, it would have been nice to have a clue. We have an ASF tradition of developing communities...this kind of stuff that Sun and IBM does is getting old. Don't open-source it; sell it. I will argue against its adoption into Apache. Googling for xmlroff yields: http://www.plurb.com/webservices/UBL4.pdf Looks like they want to donate it to Gnome, not Apache. Despite your not wanting to sound bitter, your protest still sounds bitter anyway. -Peter- - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
Peter S. Housel wrote: Looks like they want to donate it to Gnome, not Apache. AFAIR, the BSD license is pretty incompatible with the Apache license. One of the reasons that the xmlroff announcement doesn't change my commitment to FOP is that, for my interests anyway, the Apache license is superior. Others are that it is not written in Java, and only runs on Sun-supported operating systems. It almost seems like Java was bypassed because it runs on Microsoft operating systems. There are other deficiencies that I think are probable, but we won't know until we get to play with it. I definitely intend to keep plugging away at FOP. Victor Mote - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
-Original Message- From: Peter S. Housel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: December 14, 2002 2:21 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Sun XSL Formatter Arved Sandstrom [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Well, Java or C or C++ or Haskell, it would have been nice to have a clue. We have an ASF tradition of developing communities...this kind of stuff that Sun and IBM does is getting old. Don't open-source it; sell it. I will argue against its adoption into Apache. Googling for xmlroff yields: http://www.plurb.com/webservices/UBL4.pdf Looks like they want to donate it to Gnome, not Apache. Despite your not wanting to sound bitter, your protest still sounds bitter anyway. -Peter- No bitterness at all, actually, Peter. It takes a bit of wind out of my sails, sure, since xmlroff is so similar to the project that Eric Bischoff and myself were working on. Tony has certainly been aware of that for quite a long time - I don't understand why the secrecy, myself, seeing as how we are now looking at an OSS donation anyway. I'd be bitter if I were so arrogant as to think of myself as being upstaged. :-) That's not the case. I am quite familiar with the spec, and there are now a number of competing efforts. None of which are quite accurate. So there is room for more competition. Alternatively, I may talk to Tony and Eric and see if we can assist. Arved - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
-Original Message- From: Victor Mote [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: December 14, 2002 3:01 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Sun XSL Formatter Peter S. Housel wrote: Looks like they want to donate it to Gnome, not Apache. AFAIR, the BSD license is pretty incompatible with the Apache license. One of the reasons that the xmlroff announcement doesn't change my commitment to FOP is that, for my interests anyway, the Apache license is superior. Others are that it is not written in Java, and only runs on Sun-supported operating systems. It almost seems like Java was bypassed because it runs on Microsoft operating systems. There are other deficiencies that I think are probable, but we won't know until we get to play with it. I definitely intend to keep plugging away at FOP. Victor Mote Victor, I intend to continue supporting FOP myself. But can I point out that C is about as portable as it gets? Arved - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
Response Below: -Original Message- From: Arved Sandstrom [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sat 12/14/2002 2:08 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: RE: Sun XSL Formatter Victor, I intend to continue supporting FOP myself. But can I point out that C is about as portable as it gets? As long as you stick to a certain set of universally-available libraries, the source is portable...yes. This is a different kind of portability than Java offers, though, and it's a lot easier to keep something tied to a single operating system in C than it is in Java, IMHO. Since I don't want a holy war, that's all I'm going to say about that. winmail.dat- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
-Original Message- From: Victor Mote [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: December 14, 2002 3:40 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Sun XSL Formatter Arved Sandstrom wrote: But can I point out that C is about as portable as it gets? Maybe someone on this list has time to throw xmlroff source code into Visual Studio let us know how it goes :-) I'll probably do just that. If it was well-written code then it'll compile. There is nothing OS-specific about XSL, barring optimizations. Sorry, I don't mean to be smart. It certainly seems to me that C-portable is an entirely different concept than Java-portable. Sure, in a narrow sense. Binary rather than source. In practical terms C is considerably more portable. Java is basically a Windows and MacOS X VM. Also, I didn't intend to /only/ highlight portability. Java has lots of other advantages over C that are important to this kind of application. I won't recite them here, since everyone on this list already knows them. We could debate that. :-) I spend a lot of time every week dealing with Java NPEs. Seriously, you're right. Java is better for this. Writing good C requires a lot of background. Arved - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sun XSL Formatter
Peter S. Housel wrote: Arved Sandstrom [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Well, Java or C or C++ or Haskell, it would have been nice to have a clue. We have an ASF tradition of developing communities...this kind of stuff that Sun and IBM does is getting old. Don't open-source it; sell it. I will argue against its adoption into Apache. Googling for xmlroff yields: http://www.plurb.com/webservices/UBL4.pdf Looks like they want to donate it to Gnome, not Apache. Despite your not wanting to sound bitter, your protest still sounds bitter anyway. Peter, Arved, In spite of Arved's protestations, I think he has reason to be bitter. I don't want to criticise a particular company, and especially not any particular individuals, but I think this incident underlines some endemic problems in the relationship between the corporate software world and the Open Source world. I am well aware of the enormous contributions to OSS of various corporations (Sun, IBM and Netscape spring immediately to mind.) I think, however, that these problems extend right into the standards development process itself. I should like to ponder these issues a little longer, and then perhaps take them up in a wider forum. Peter -- Peter B. West [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/ Lord, to whom shall we go? - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
Response below. -Original Message- From: Arved Sandstrom [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sat 12/14/2002 3:47 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: RE: Sun XSL Formatter Sure, in a narrow sense. Binary rather than source. In practical terms C is considerably more portable. Java is basically a Windows and MacOS X VM. Last I checked, it was more than that. At a minimum, your list of OSes is a tad bit small. My company runs JBoss on an AS/400 running OS400, and one of my old instant messengers has been reported to be running on OS/2. And then there's things like the KVM. I'd like to see C so portable it goes straight from a Linux desktop and compiles for a Palm without requiring a mountain of preprocessor directives. We could debate that. :-) I spend a lot of time every week dealing with Java NPEs. I'm not sure what your point is there. I deal with null pointers in any language with pointers. Seriously, you're right. Java is better for this. Writing good C requires a lot of background. Lesser men could take offense to that. Especially if they weren't C programmers already. winmail.dat- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
Not to sound bitter, but it would have been nice to know about this sooner. This pretty much usurps what I and Eric Bischoff have been doing (when we can); I sort of figure it didn't get written in the last month either. Any reason for the blasted secretiveness? Arved -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: December 13, 2002 12:09 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Sun XSL Formatter Peter did ask... The Sun xmlroff XSL formatter is written in C, and it uses libxml2 and libxslt plus the GLib, GObject, and Pango libraries that underlie GTK+ and GNOME (although it does not require either GTK+ or GNOME). The formatter currently produces PDF output only. xmlroff is a command line program, but the bulk of the XSL formatting is implemented as a libfo library that can be linked to any program that requires XSL formatting capability. It will be available under a BSD license. It is being developed on both Solaris and Linux. The formatter is awaiting final approval before the code can be made public source. An announcement will be made on xsl-list, www-xsl-fo, and XSL-FO@YahooGroups once the code is available. Regards, Tony Graham XML Technology Center Sun Microsystems Ireland - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sun XSL Formatter
Arved Sandstrom wrote: Not to sound bitter, but it would have been nice to know about this sooner. This pretty much usurps what I and Eric Bischoff have been doing (when we can); I sort of figure it didn't get written in the last month either. Any reason for the blasted secretiveness? From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Subject: Sun XSL Formatter Peter did ask... Tony, Thanks for the response. I must say, though, that had the product been written in Java, I would have been asking the same question as Arved. Peter -- Peter B. West [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/ Lord, to whom shall we go? - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Sun XSL Formatter
Well, Java or C or C++ or Haskell, it would have been nice to have a clue. We have an ASF tradition of developing communities...this kind of stuff that Sun and IBM does is getting old. Don't open-source it; sell it. I will argue against its adoption into Apache. Arved -Original Message- From: Peter B. West [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: December 13, 2002 8:43 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Sun XSL Formatter Arved Sandstrom wrote: Not to sound bitter, but it would have been nice to know about this sooner. This pretty much usurps what I and Eric Bischoff have been doing (when we can); I sort of figure it didn't get written in the last month either. Any reason for the blasted secretiveness? From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Subject: Sun XSL Formatter Peter did ask... Tony, Thanks for the response. I must say, though, that had the product been written in Java, I would have been asking the same question as Arved. Peter -- Peter B. West [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/ Lord, to whom shall we go? - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sun xsl formatter being donated to open source
On Tue, 2002-11-19 at 09:18, Oleg Tkachenko wrote: Hello there! Nikolai Grigoriev discovered new xsl formatter becoming open source ;) http://www.xmlconference.org/xmlusa/2002/thursday.asp#vp5 Comments? Does anybody plan to participate xml 2002? Some people even suggest it's Apache where Sun want to donate it to. So why would they do it in that order. Why not donate resources to develop. I haven't heard anything so we'll see what happens. Keiron. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sun xsl formatter being donated to open source
Keiron Liddle wrote: On Tue, 2002-11-19 at 09:18, Oleg Tkachenko wrote: Hello there! Nikolai Grigoriev discovered new xsl formatter becoming open source ;) http://www.xmlconference.org/xmlusa/2002/thursday.asp#vp5 Comments? Does anybody plan to participate xml 2002? Some people even suggest it's Apache where Sun want to donate it to. So why would they do it in that order. Why not donate resources to develop. I haven't heard anything so we'll see what happens. None of us have. But Tony lurks on this list, so he should be able to tell us. I must say that if Sun have been working on this for some time, with the intention of going OS, I am going to be very pissed off with them for not announcing it earlier. On the other hand, there may have been a bunfight within Sun about whether or not to release the source, in which case some folks at Sun should be congratulated. Are you there, Tony? Peter -- Peter B. West [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/ Lord, to whom shall we go? - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sun xsl formatter being donated to open source
Keiron Liddle wrote: On Tue, 2002-11-19 at 09:18, Oleg Tkachenko wrote: Hello there! Nikolai Grigoriev discovered new xsl formatter becoming open source ;) http://www.xmlconference.org/xmlusa/2002/thursday.asp#vp5 Comments? Does anybody plan to participate xml 2002? Some people even suggest it's Apache where Sun want to donate it to. So why would they do it in that order. Why not donate resources to develop. I haven't heard anything so we'll see what happens. I spoke with Tony Graham of Sun, who will be speaking on this at XML 2002. He said he was not at liberty to discuss it all in advance of the conference--apparently they are working out the final legal details of the release or something to that effect. Cheers, Eliot -- W. Eliot Kimber, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Consultant, ISOGEN International 1016 La Posada Dr., Suite 240 Austin, TX 78752 Phone: 512.656.4139 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
