Paul T vs FO

[Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian dot rahtz at computing-services dot oxford dot ac dot uk>]

Paul Tchistopolskii writes:
 > I'm not saying is something a crime or not, but I'm sure that few smart 
 > people can produce some useful set of formatting objects *much* faster 
 > than it takes W3C to do that. 

and yet the fact remains that they haven't done so. fine words butter
no parsnips, as my mother used to say. 

I am as critical of XSL FO as the next man, but 

 a) Its (nearly) here. I can typeset decent pages with it, in several
 implementations. I can, in fact, produce more pages with it than the
 revolutionary LinusFO ('cos that don't exist yet).

 b) We'll never solve the problems of automated typesetting until we
 get some systems to play with. You don't know yet that XSL FO cannot
 deliver, because we don't have enough experience in using the model
 it inherited from DSSSL

 > I'm sure that 'alternative XSL FO' will 
 > gonna happen *anyway*, no matter what will be the progress 
 > in XSL FO WG. Time will expalin why  I'm making this statement.

Your argument is predicated on the arrival of a Linus on the
scene. That might happen tomorrow, it might happen in 5 years, you
can't predict. There is, of course, a lot more to LinusFO than
technical correctness!

Sebastian


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