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Re: FO Comparison to HTML and PDF
- To: xsl-list at lists dot mulberrytech dot com
- Subject: Re: [xsl] FO Comparison to HTML and PDF
- From: "Christopher R. Maden" <crism at maden dot org>
- Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2001 01:50:52 -0800
- Reply-To: xsl-list at lists dot mulberrytech dot com
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At 03:43 31-10-2001, Raul Rodriguez wrote:
>I am putting together a white paper advocating FO to be used in our
>products and services. For the layperson, I wrote a section called, "How
>Does FO Compare to PDF and HTML?" and made this scale diagram
>
>
>Content <=====================================> Fidelity
> | | |
> HTML FO PDF
I'm not entirely clear on what your aim is. Are you pitching FO as a
content preparation or storage format? If so, I think that's a terrible
idea; in some ways, it combines the worst elements of HTML and PDF, as your
control isn't total but you don't have any meaning present.
While there is nothing to stop you from using FO that way, FO is really
intended to be used, as the XSL Recommendation suggests, with XML source
documents and XSLT. What this really gives the management is HTML *and*
PDF at the same time - the XML source can drive creation of both output
formats, and more, as needed.
As a delivery format, FO is somewhat useless, as there are very few native
rendering implementations; generally, FO is processed into PDF (and
possibly thence to print) for final human consumption.
So I might suggest a different diagram, with a different approach:
Content =================================> Delivery
| |
XML --------XSLT--------FO----> PDF
|---------------> HTML
|---------------> text
|---------------> database
The real selling point (and I realize I'm preaching almost entirely to the
choir here) is that semantic markup (e.g., XML) describes your data in a
content-neutral way. Binding the presentation later means that not only
can you get multiple output formats more easily, but it also means that
changing those outputs is much easier. If the house style changes, a
modification to one stylesheet can produce the new style across the board,
rather than running laborious search-and-replace efforts on many documents.
As far as page fidelity goes - when it's important, it's important, and
marketing collateral is often best created in PageMaker or Illustrator.
~Chris
[I'm a bit surprised to see only one other reply to this. Perhaps they all
went off-list as being a bit off-topic... I'll take my chances.]
- --
Christopher R. Maden, Principal Consultant, HMM Consulting Int'l, Inc.
DTDs/schemas - conversion - ebooks - publishing - Web - B2B - training
<URL: http://www.hmmci.com/ > <URL: http://crism.maden.org/consulting/ >
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