RE: SGML, DTDs, EDDs, and FOSIs

[larry.kollar@xxxxxxxxxx]

Peter Ring wrote:

> That FOSI should be replaced by DSSSL is a joke now. ... DSSSL is about 
as
> alive as FOSI by now -- that is, very limited new development. Almost 
all
> recent development efforts in this area are directed to XSLT and XSL-FO.

I don't know -- the Linux Documentation Project uses DSSSL and makes
their DocBook transforms available to all. They also have XSL to HTML
and FO transforms, but not as well-developed yet. However, I find XSLT
*much* easier to deal with than DSSSL (I've never been able (to wrap
my head around (those stupid languages (with so many (parentheses))))).


> Well, FOSI was designed to meet all needs wrt. presentation. XSL-FO will
> probably also go out of vogue some day.

Maybe, maybe. IMO, FOSI and XSL:FO only add an extra step to the
publishing process -- why not go directly to the output format(s)
desired? One less thing to maintain.

> As far as I can tell, TeX has been
> the most longlived and vital formatting language ;)

The LDP's stylesheets transform to TeX. But, point of order, troff
has been around longer than TeX and people still use it for documents
as short as manpages and as long as Tanenbaum's "Computer Networks"
(over 800 pages).  A ground-up rewrite, groff, eliminates the
limitations of the original troff and would also be an excellent
target XSL or DSSSL output format for printing.

--
Larry Kollar, Senior Technical Writer, ARRIS
"Content creators are the engine that drives
value in the information life cycle."
    -- Barry Schaeffer, on XML-Doc


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