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Re: Q: XML+XSL transforms to a print-ready format
Subject: Re: Q: XML+XSL transforms to a print-ready format From: "Paul Tchistopolskii" <paul@xxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 04:07:13 -0700 |
> Paul Tchistopolskii writes: > > If you have good lists - you have 95% of the functionality > > usualy requested from tables. > > that just doesn't conform with my observations, I am afraid. how do > you render the traditional matrix-like > > a b c d > 1 2 3 4 > 5 6 7 8 > > as list? (where the numbers have decimal points, and need lining up) > > do other people agree that table rendering is not needed for a > daily working system? I'l just repeat myself. We got about 5 testcases from the 'outher space' from people who wanted us to render their typical layouts. Some testcases has been rendered with lists instead of tables. The clients were saticfied with the results. Of course, I'm not saying that good lists are equal to the tables. What I'm saying is that if the system has no support for images - it is critical. It usualy stops you right at the beginning. However, when there is no support for tables - it is not a show-stopper ( especialy if you know that it'l be there soon and that 'soon' is not one year forward) For some reason you think that the tables part is a show-stopper. I don't think it is. The time will show us who was right. Netscape still has problems with rendering nested tables. Do we like it or not - it's the reality. > > Once again. The current shape of RenderX rendering engine > > is sufficient to start using it in the production environment. > > I wish you would show me, then, how to do a simple dictionary layout, > where the running head is > foo ... bar > where "foo" is the first headword on the page, and "bar" is the last. > yes, I know this is very obscure for many people, its what I call a > production environment. Yes, this is probably an XSL FO question, not > a RenderX question. Yes. There are problems with XSL FO. It may be not a good thing. It is just the best thing I see at the moment. For a couple of reasons. > > tag somebody else will come and say that because rendering > > engine does not supports 'nice' page numbering in the situation > > when the page has a landscape orientation - it is imcomplete? > > yup. until you can do what typical day-to-day formatters do in the > real world, its incomplete. hopefully, in due course, you'll go > *beyond* what current generation formatters do. What is that 'typical' day-to-day formatter? Is it MS Word? Or may be Jade? Or... Netscape? Isn't Netscape the most widely used day-to-day formatter? And it still has problems with nested tables ... Sure - the TeX package powered by TeX guru may be unbeatable thing. In some environments. UNIX server driven by UNIX guru may be also unbeatable thing. In some environments. 100 in-house developers, sitting at their cubicles pressing keyboards for custom development may be also unbeatable thing for some tasks. In some environments. For example, I think in the environment when you have million of 'free' slaves it would be hard to sell any device that could replace 10 slaves in their occupation ( even the device is realy good). In some countries ( not in teh US) it's *much* cheapre to hire a couple of persons who will press the keyboards doing some trivial opreations, than to bye the appropriate software. I'm not kidding. Environment matters. For some reason most of end-users are running Windows on their desktops. Even on servers. I'm not saying that Windows is better, or more reliable OS than UNIX. For some reasons most of the people are using Windows for their day-to-day typical tasks. Well ... it appears that I should start explaning the advantages of XML here. Kind of strange occupation - so I'l not continue my explanation why people sometimes decide to use a software that has a limited functionality if comparing it to the software they are already using. > > Actualy, I see nothing wrong here. I was working in some > > different companies in different countries and most of > > them were using this or very similiar model. > > the "trust me, i am your friend" model, beloved of IBM in the old days? I don't know what is wrong with IBM. I'm not that experienced in marketing. It's better to say that I'm not experienced in the marketing at all. I think that for some ( obvious) reason most of the small companies are trying to build a good relations with their clients. To me it's well understandable. Also, it's understandable why most of the users want to pay nothing but get the good software in return for that nothing. For free. Almost every week I'm receiving some email when somebody ( for some reason ) wants me to do some job for him. For free. Maybe, it's because I'm providing some open-source? I don't know. I don't think it's possible to saticfy everybody in this world. The only way I see is to follow the rules. If you see were renderx is breaking some moral rule ( whatever it may mean) - please let me know. I think that it would be better to do in a private email first, because you may be mistaken. Or you are never making mistakes? > > And I'm answering that our HTML may be 'incorrect', because > > it does not realy matter. > > No. it does not matter, per se, that your HTML is invalid. > It does not matter, per se, if the toilets are dirty when you go for > an interview in a new place of work. Its just a simple test one can > apply. What would you think about the person who is spending the whole day cleaning toilets in the building, just because he can not live with the feeling that some toilet is dirty? Of course, if it is his profession - there is nothing strange with that person. Of course, it may be not good if we'l become a member of W3C and still have no time to validate our HTML. Until that - I don't care about the hidden problems that make no harm to anybody. More. I don't care about supporting Netscape version 2. I even don''t care too much about supporting Netscape version 3. Actualy I'm so shameless, that I don't care about supporting browsers other than Netscape 4.* and MSIE v5.*, because I'm making products for the majority. I'm also not optimizing every line of the code when I'm writing the code. I'm using profiler to optimize the code. Shame on me, maybe I'm realy too lazy. > > What particular problem do you have with our HTML pages ? > none. I was just being picky, so I threw it at validator.w3.org The thing is that sometimes I have no time to sleep. Actualy, I apologize, but I have spend much more time than I realy have for writing some letters. It means that I'l not answer to this ( and related ) threads anymore for about 7 days. Please forgive me, if something still remains unclear - I tried to make it clear. I had to. Rgds.Paul. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= paul@xxxxxxxxx www.renderx.com www.pault.com XMLTube * Perl/JavaConnector * PerlApplicationServer =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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