Re: [NTG-context] Context against XSL

2004-10-01 Thread Hans Hagen
Taco Hoekwater wrote:
Hans Hagen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I'm on and off implementing an fo engine (foxet) and run into fuzziness 
with regards to the specs (a bad omen is that that there i could not 
find a good manual and the ones i have are made up rather poorly, which 
indicated that we're not so much dealing with high end typesetting, but 
with regular batchprocessing of not too complex documents).
 
The longer one has to read in the XSL-FO specification, the more one 
resents having to do so. If you are lookiing for a road towards creating 
pdf documents, then ConTeXt is like an actual freeway with perhaps a few 
potholes and missing roadsigns, where XSL-FO is a set of directions on how 
to create a jungle road, written down by a civil engineer with terrible
handwriting mirroring a quite chaotic mind who nonetheless insists on 
doing everything "the right way"(tm). 
you're right! unfortunately those engineers can ride on the back of the 
horse with xml painted all over it, which makes it good by principle for 
those who pay them; an interesting aspect of this is that while xml 
opens many roads, the tendensy is towards taking one road; there is 
probably some thinking behind this that we suddenly can solve all 
problems for ever and do with one road.

btw, as with much xml related things: much of what is around as 
'standard' is actually just a reversed engineered application interface, 
or worse: serving as an interface to different applications which makes 
it fuzzy; take xsl: there are a lot of dupplicate attributes just to 
serve css; this is strange because the whole idea behind xslt (which is 
mostly ok) is that one can transform, so there is no need for those 
duplicates. The engineer serves to many masters.

apart from the specs, fo lacks a real proper box model: (like css, there 
is no real way to do for instance vertical alignment comparable with 
tex's fill's); it somehow started from the wrong angle;  and then .. how 
about math, chemistry, etc -) a long road ahead

Various people have been busy trying to build that road according to the 
specifications, and some of the toll (payfare) roads are in fact reasonably 
close. I'm speaking with a certain fondness in my voice really, because I 
am also busy implementing a (commercial) fo engine using ConTeXt.
-)
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.

I sometimes wonder if it makes sense to cook up an alternative model on 
top of context -)

Hans
-
  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
  Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
 | www.pragma-pod.nl
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Re: [NTG-context] Context against XSL

2004-09-30 Thread Hans Hagen
Dirar Bougatef wrote:
 > xsl is mostly a specification, and there are program soutthere that 
implement parts of is. The page model that xsl uses is not that 
advanced. Also, because you more or less make up the page, you also sort
 > of disable all kind of clever things that batch processors like tex + 
macropackages may do. This means that xsl (fo) is suited for a certain 
range of typesetting tasks. From my experience your expectations
 > should not be that high with regards to complex layouts.

Do you mean that i went too far in my interpretation of XSL blocks as 
TEX boxes ?
What i see is that XSL as you said is quiet the same thing as CSS2 hence 
it will support complex layouts (At the end it is only a matter of 
dividing your page into big or small boxes and the ability of accessing 
them, isn't it ?). In this case the difference with tex is only going to 
be that the last handles caracter (with ligatures etc.) and word spacing 
(with regard to hyphenation) according to some rules where the other 
doesn't.
there  is more: pagebreaks, floats, marginal notes, etc those are the 
complicating factors

I have read an article that says that the whole matter about creating 
XSL was printed documents with all what this implies such as headers, 
footers, etc (The stuff that does not concern electronic documents).
indeed, simple docs with only headers and footers -)
 > i find that using tex directly (using the context xml parser) in most 
cases is rather efficient; the problem is always in getting (frequently 
inconsistent) designs done. In that respect my motto has become 'the
 > problem does not change'

What do you mean by this. Is it that i have to stick to only few designs 
and avoid changing too much .. ?
no, that depending on the layout/design, finding a solution for some 
problem will always be difficult; kind of: it's nice to use some 4th 
generation language, but it still leaves us with the 10% hard work in a 
3th one; look at all those editors we see around us: it's no big deal to 
cut and past a basic editor from components readily available, making a 
real good one is still some work -)

I would like to write my documents in XML, keep THEM on a server and 
generate PDF, when the user clicks on the link to my document.
Of course i want to use Context to typeset my document.  What can i use 
for this  ?  Have you already writen a parser for standard (e.g Docbook) 
documents ?
some have, not me; it's a matter of mapping elements onto context 
thingies, the parser is already there; just peek in the x-* files

Hans
-
  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
  Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
 | www.pragma-pod.nl
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Re: [NTG-context] Context against XSL

2004-09-30 Thread Dirar Bougatef
Hans Hagen wrote:
Dirar Bougatef wrote:
Does anyone have informations about tex macro packages and their 
advantages over XSL (previously known as XSL-FO) ?

I have read somewhere that tex is a good implementation of the XSL 
standard !

I think this is in regard that tex thinks in matter of boxes (Which 
is the equivalent of XSL blocks). I this case, is the difference 
between the two in the fact that at the end tex and macros are only 
algorithms for typesetting blocks automatically ?

xsl is mostly a specification, and there are program soutthere that 
implement parts of is. The page model that xsl uses is not that 
advanced. Also, because you more or less make up the page, you also 
sort of disable all kind of clever things that batch processors like 
tex + macropackages may do. This means that xsl (fo) is suited for a 
certain range of typesetting tasks. From my experience your 
expectations should not be that high with regards to complex layouts.

I'm on and off implementing an fo engine (foxet) and run into 
fuzziness with regards to the specs (a bad omen is that that there i 
could not find a good manual and the ones i have are made up rather 
poorly, which indicated that we're not so much dealing with high end 
typesetting, but with regular batchprocessing of not too complex 
documents).

Recently i've been playing with css (from which xsl inherits much, 
which does not add to a clear design imo) and i'm surprised that 
browsers are so different that one ends up hacking around as much as 
one would using tex -) In many ways xsl is driven by the web, and not 
by real typesetting (is my guess). paper and screen are different things.

What you use depends on what you need it for. For a long time, the 
midset of designers has been shaped by what page maker, quark, etc can 
and cannot do (therefore all those ragged right docs, where the 
limitations have become the standard). I fear that in the next couple 
of years the limited possibilities of for instance xsl will bring down 
the standards (if it can't be done, one will just lower the demands), 
which also fits in the short lifecycle of most documents.

So, what to use when:
- here i find that using tex directly (using the context xml parser) 
in most cases is rather efficient; the problem is always in getting 
(frequently inconsistent) designs done. In that respect my motto has 
become 'the problem does not change'

- xslt is nice for preprocessing and manipulating documents and often 
one can get away with clean coding

- some scripting is often needed as well (for instance in order to add 
typographical detail, which is rather easy to do with regexps in 
scripting languages)

- xsl (fo), well for the moment i see it as a kind of 'placed xml'; 
when customers want us to use it, we'll do it (gives a feeling of 
independence), but in most cases using some direct mapping onto tex is 
not only easier (cheaper) but also gives a bit more control. It all 
depends on the design.

- so: just use the best of all worlds (which is what xml is about: 
it's consistent -when used all right- and it can be transformed; 
interestingly there are quite some organizations out there that bind 
themselves to just one kind of xml handling app thereby contradicting 
the concept.

In de time i want to write down something on these matters.
Hans
btw, there is a special mailing list for foxet; a preliminary version 
is in the alpha zip

-
  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
  Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
 | www.pragma-pod.nl
-
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.
Hi Hans and thanks for your answers.
> xsl is mostly a specification, and there are program soutthere that 
implement parts of is. The page model that xsl uses is not that 
advanced. Also, because you more or less make up the page, you also sort
> of disable all kind of clever things that batch processors like tex + 
macropackages may do. This means that xsl (fo) is suited for a certain 
range of typesetting tasks. From my experience your expectations
> should not be that high with regards to complex layouts.

Do you mean that i went too far in my interpretation of XSL blocks as 
TEX boxes ?
What i see is that XSL as you said is quiet the same thing as CSS2 hence 
it will support complex layouts (At the end it is only a matter of 
dividing your page into big or small boxes and the ability of accessing 
them, isn't it ?). In this case the difference with tex is only going to 
be that the last handles caracter (with ligatures etc.) and word spacing 
(with regard to hyphenation) according to some rules where the other 
do

Re: [NTG-context] Context against XSL

2004-09-30 Thread Hans Hagen
Dirar Bougatef wrote:
Does anyone have informations about tex macro packages and their 
advantages over XSL (previously known as XSL-FO) ?

I have read somewhere that tex is a good implementation of the XSL 
standard !

I think this is in regard that tex thinks in matter of boxes (Which is 
the equivalent of XSL blocks). I this case, is the difference between 
the two in the fact that at the end tex and macros are only algorithms 
for typesetting blocks automatically ?
xsl is mostly a specification, and there are program soutthere that 
implement parts of is. The page model that xsl uses is not that 
advanced. Also, because you more or less make up the page, you also sort 
of disable all kind of clever things that batch processors like tex + 
macropackages may do. This means that xsl (fo) is suited for a certain 
range of typesetting tasks. From my experience your expectations should 
not be that high with regards to complex layouts.

I'm on and off implementing an fo engine (foxet) and run into fuzziness 
with regards to the specs (a bad omen is that that there i could not 
find a good manual and the ones i have are made up rather poorly, which 
indicated that we're not so much dealing with high end typesetting, but 
with regular batchprocessing of not too complex documents).

Recently i've been playing with css (from which xsl inherits much, which 
does not add to a clear design imo) and i'm surprised that browsers are 
so different that one ends up hacking around as much as one would using 
tex -) In many ways xsl is driven by the web, and not by real 
typesetting (is my guess). paper and screen are different things.

What you use depends on what you need it for. For a long time, the 
midset of designers has been shaped by what page maker, quark, etc can 
and cannot do (therefore all those ragged right docs, where the 
limitations have become the standard). I fear that in the next couple of 
years the limited possibilities of for instance xsl will bring down the 
standards (if it can't be done, one will just lower the demands), which 
also fits in the short lifecycle of most documents.

So, what to use when:
- here i find that using tex directly (using the context xml parser) in 
most cases is rather efficient; the problem is always in getting 
(frequently inconsistent) designs done. In that respect my motto has 
become 'the problem does not change'

- xslt is nice for preprocessing and manipulating documents and often 
one can get away with clean coding

- some scripting is often needed as well (for instance in order to add 
typographical detail, which is rather easy to do with regexps in 
scripting languages)

- xsl (fo), well for the moment i see it as a kind of 'placed xml'; when 
customers want us to use it, we'll do it (gives a feeling of 
independence), but in most cases using some direct mapping onto tex is 
not only easier (cheaper) but also gives a bit more control. It all 
depends on the design.

- so: just use the best of all worlds (which is what xml is about: it's 
consistent -when used all right- and it can be transformed; 
interestingly there are quite some organizations out there that bind 
themselves to just one kind of xml handling app thereby contradicting 
the concept.

In de time i want to write down something on these matters.
Hans
btw, there is a special mailing list for foxet; a preliminary version is 
in the alpha zip

-
  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
  Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
 | www.pragma-pod.nl
-
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[NTG-context] Context against XSL

2004-09-30 Thread Dirar Bougatef




Hi,

Does anyone have informations about tex macro packages and their
advantages over XSL (previously known as XSL-FO) ?

I have read somewhere that tex is a good implementation of the XSL
standard ! 

I think this is in regard that tex thinks in matter of boxes (Which is
the equivalent of XSL blocks). I this case, is the difference between
the two in the fact that at the end tex and macros are only algorithms
for typesetting blocks automatically ?

Thanks.

Dirar.


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