Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XSL print StyleSheets

[Alex Lancaster <alex at santafe dot edu>]

>>>>> "CS" == Christoph Steinbeck <steinbeck@ice.mpg.de> writes:

CS> Alex Lancaster wrote:
>> The XML/SGML translation, for most cases, is pretty trivial IMHO.
>> The bigger hurdle is whether or not to use XSL or DSSSL, since the
>> DSSSL support is more mature than XSL.  (You can use the DSSSL
>> tooks for XML, btw, in other words using XML does not necessarily
>> imply you have to use the XSL stylesheets).

CS> Is this completely true? One of the annoying problems that I run
CS> into when writing valid XML is that the Jade with Norms DSSSL
CS> stylesheets produces a trailing ">" when making XREF's with the
CS> <xref linkend="x1"/> syntax. Only if I omitt the "/" at the end
CS> (<xref linkend="x1">) I get the right result. But having no end
CS> tag is not valid xml, right?

You're quite right, there are definitely issues with SGML -> XML
conversion, I don't mean to gloss over that.

I was really trying to point out that, in my experience, the real
hurdles in document processing, are in customizing and/or writing
stylesheets, and by extension, what kind of stylesheets you choose to
use (since the DSSSL stylesheets for DocBook have been around for a
couple of years longer than the XSL stylesheets for DocBook).

Most of the wrestling I've done with DocBook over the last two years
is customizing the stylesheets (usually with a driver stylesheet) to
do exactly what I want, and learning how to program DSSSL, "just so".
Norm has done an excellent job, by the way, on this.

Now I'm putting my toes in the XSL waters, and having to learn a whole
new syntax, and new semantics.  Since the DocBook XSL stylesheet
implementation (and XSL, itself) is also relatively new, there are
also issues that are related to the stylesheets and the stability of
the XSL language itself, that aren't present in the DSSSL case (which
is relatively mature technology).

All of which isn't to say that things won't/aren't getting better (in
fact, they are getting better - at an exponential rate, thanks to the
Herculean efforts of Norm, Sebastian and many others).  However, even
though I personally like living on the bleeding edge, I know not
everybody else does, and so DSSSL is probably still the choice for
folks who don't need to make many modifications of the stylesheets
`out-of-the-box'...
-- 
Alex Lancaster * alex@santafe.edu * www.santafe.edu/~alex * 505 984-8800 x242
Santa Fe Institute (www.santafe.edu) & Swarm Development Group (www.swarm.org)