Re: Adobe credibility and FrameMaker development LONG-ish

[Marcus Carr <mrc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dan Emory wrote:

> The question is not whether XSL has recommendation status, it's whether,
> when it does reach that status, Adobe plans to allow the EDD's format rules
> to be
> converted to XSL stylesheets. This probably would mean that there would be
> two versions of the EDD--one for use in printing/producing PDF, and a
> modified version of the first one for producing XSL stylesheets.

Sorry, it's not that easy. XSL provides the mechanisms for two types of styling
(for want of a better word), one is formatting, the other is transformation.
Further in your mail, you stress that Adobe must commit to full compliance, but the
transformation aspects of the spec are irrelevant in an editing environment - you
simply couldn't implement them. Are you asking for just the formatting aspects? Why
are Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) not acceptable? It's already a W3C recommendation,
stable and in wide use.

> All I was trying to convey is that a time separation of 2 years between
> major releases guarantees that FM+SGML will lag behind XML's evolution. I'm
> sure there are nimbler companies out there who are poised to issue new
> releases of their XML-aware products concurrent with each segment of the
> "standard" that reaches recommendation status. Adobe needs to adopt such a
> strategy for FM+SGML.

I would be quite confident that Adobe have considered their product cycle in the
context of the changing technology.

> I don't know what a "DOM" is. could you enlighten me?

Sorry, DOM is the Document Object Model - an API that programmers can use to build
documents, navigate their structure, and add, modify, or delete elements and
content. In the absense of a DTD, a tree-based view of a particular document will
in many cases provide all the structural information required.

> What I really meant by "documents that don't have a DTD" was
> whether FM+SGML 5.5.6 can export and import a document with either of the
> following prologue and declarations:
> ________________________________________________________
> <? XML version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" RMD='INTERNAL' ?>
> <! DOCTYPE XYZ [
>    the entire DTD
> ] >
>
> OR
>
> <? XML version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" RMD='NONE' ?>
> ________________________________________________________

No, for a couple of reasons - your declarations aren't valid because:

  a)  you can't have a space between "<?" and "xml"

  b)  you must use "xml", not "XML"

  c)  you cannot add your RMD attribute (or any other) to the XML declaration - you
might want to look into "standalone".

I'm sure Adobe will be supporting the import of XML documents that use a DTD and if
they choose to, they'll also support the import of well-formed documents. I have
written a small OmniMark script that reads an instance, builds a DTD based on it,
hands the DTD to the parser and hands the instance to the parser. Adobe could do
the same right now, but I'm not certain that there's going to be any sort of
crushing demand for this functionality. The concept of well-formedness is much more
relevant at the post-authoring stage. What you describe could be loosely referred
to as a filter - whether Adobe do their own or leave it to third-party developers
remains to be seen.

> The InDesign model does seem to fit nicely with my conclusion.

You heard it here first! :-)

> Suppose Adobe were to announce it's strategy as follows:

Although I appreciate the amount of thought and typing that went into the following
passages, I prefer not to enter into philosophical discussions about a topic that I
have neither knowledge in or control of.


--
Regards,

Marcus Carr                      email:  mrc@allette.com.au
___________________________________________________________________
Allette Systems (Australia)      www:    http://www.allette.com.au
___________________________________________________________________
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
       - Einstein



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