2. Would the vendors be interested in contributing and
implementing community-developed extensions?
I am speaking for myself. A single brilliant personality is almost
always better than a committee. A committee is almost always better
than a community. I am afraid of implementing and supporting
community-developed extensions because it is way to turn XSL FO
implementors and users' life into nightmare.
A better approach would be to help the working group survive and continue
its activity (that is, on XSL 2.0 or whatever). The sad fate of html and
its many vendor and community-developed extensions is a good (though very
discouraging)
proof of my words.
Of course it would be supremely cool if a single
non-trivial FO instance could be used interchangably
with all or most of the available FO implementations.
This is a project I would be happy to participate in. And, speaking for RenderX,
as one of implementors of XSL FO, I am saying the same: we have published an
extensive
set of tests; we are committed to continue developing and making widely
available
validation tools (such as included into the current version, including the
trial one, folint.xsl
stylesheet for XSL FO validation) and testing frameworks.
We are ready to support in all feasible ways a community effort to encourage
all implementators
to come closer in their interpretations of the recommendation.
David Tolpin
CTO
RenderX
http://www.renderx.com/
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