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Re: [xsl] Prince XML vs Docbook

2018-01-18 14:30:04
On 18.1.2018 19:14, Eliot Kimber ekimber(_at_)contrext(_dot_)com wrote:
In an XSL-FO transform the generation and styling of edge region
content is usually tightly bound into the larger FO generation (and
thus styling) code, making it harder to find and adjust just as a
matter of style.

My experience is that easy things can be done easily in CSS then
XSL-FO. But more complex things (including this) are much more
difficult and sometimes even not possible in CSS.

XML -> xform to HTML -> xform to HTML optimized for CSS -> CSS
pagination engine -> Pages

Couple years ago I have tasked one of my students to create CSS based
print output to DocBook stylesheets. First part was quite easy -- it
was pretty simple to customize of existing transformation to HTML to
produce HTML output suitable for further CSS processing.

Then second problem was to create CSS stylesheet for print. It was
very easy to create such stylesheet for one fixed design. But I wanted
same flexibility as in XSL-FO DocBook stylesheets -- there are
parameters which can very easily change font-family for all titles and
similar things. This was impossible to implement in pure CSS. We had
to utilize CSS preprocessors like Less/SASS to make customization
really easy and comparable to XSLT based FO stylesheet. Today CSS
natively supports variables -- so for some things CSS preprocessor
will no longer be needed.

But I think that if we want to provide good CSS based print solution
for generic vocabularies like DITA/DocBook plain CSS is not enough, we
have to provide easier to customize Less/SASS stylesheet. Which adds
complexity, yet another syntax too learn and makes toolchain more complex.

The challenge of course is finding someone to write such a book
(and keep it up to date as the technology evolves)....

And unfortunately divergence between CSS print engines probably even
higher then between FO engines as "CSS Print standards" are still
evolving and more or less ignored by majority of CSS WG.

                                Jirka

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