Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Docbook xsl stylesheets and accessibilityrequirements?

[Tobias Reif <tobiasreif at pinkjuice dot com>]

Adam DiCarlo wrote:

> Tobias, I really didn't mean to imply anything you did was wrong.
> It's perfectly fine and good (and who am I to say anyways) to do your
> own thing for DocBook->XHTML transformations.  Nothing wrong with
> that.

Great! Peaceful co-existence (without one-way expectations etc) is the 
best way to go :)

> Perhaps you're right that you're needs were so radically
> divergant that no merging was possible.

I wasn't so much about merging:

I worked with Norm's XSLTs over some months, I helped via lots of 
constructive feedback, then when I saw that my requirements can't be met 
with customizations or small changes, I decided to write my own XSLTs 
(and told him). I could have decided to join Norm's project (ask if I 
could join), but I did not choose this way.

So at no point I was a user of his XSLTs while having my own XSLTs to 
merge/contribute.

Now I have my own project; I am not able to find the time to work on it 
and at the same time work on or help with another DocBook2XHTML project.

> And I didn't mean to make any
> sort of evaluation on contributions you've made or not made towards
> the projects managed under the Docbook Open Respository.

There are two (among others) separate projects, so this is a non-issue 
anyways.

Sice you originally asked for patches/contributions:
If Mike Kay, for each feature he implements, would send patches to each 
of the other XSLT processor projects (in the various formats), he would 
not find enough time to really do anything else.

> So lets leave it at that.

Yes. This thread definitely wants to go to bed :)

Thank you very much for your understanding, and for respecting my 
independence, and for recognizing that my project is not in any way 
connected to any subproject of docbook.sourceforge.net.

> One interesting rather unrelated point:
>
> Tobias Reif <tobiasreif@pinkjuice.com> writes:
>
>>Validity is *very* hard to achieve for arbitary valid DocBook input.
>>No XSLT author could ever promise that all output generated by his
>>XSLTs will be valid, AFAICS.
>>
> I need to learn more about XSLT -- is this really true, can someone
> other than Tobias confirm it?  I know it's true of DSSSL but I thought
> at least technically it was possible to have one tree form transform
> into another tree form in such a way that it's possible to ensure that
> given valid inputs all possible outputs would be valid.  Maybe this is
> feasible but it's just not what XSLT provides.

Just to clarify: I was talking about transforming DocBook, which is a 
very large and complex (not very strict) grammar, to other formats like 
XHTML which are smaller but still large and still not very simple. A lot 
can be done to increase the chance for valid output, but I don't think 
it could realistically be promised for all and any any input doc(s), 
without going to very great lengths (many LOC of XSLT).

For simple formats, and especially for more strict input formats, the 
promise of valid output becomes more realistic.

The more the schema (DTD/RNG/WXS/...) of the valid input instance is 
strict, the more the promise can be made realistically AFAICS.

Tobi

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