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Article:
 Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL
Subject: Still cubersome
Date: 2005-04-02 09:47:51
From: nok4

My opinion:
For structured data ( those from database ):
Let people first design a PDF template, and then fill real data into it and regenarate all pages by running a program. This way we can reduce tools people need to learn -- neither CSS, nor XSL-FO, just some advanced desingner like openoffice. Just reuse templates.


For semi-structured data requiring many output formats (like docbook files):
We still need XSL tranformation tools, CSS can only apply style to XML/HTML output. On character terminal device, We still need texinfo or plain text, CSS just can't help.


One more problem is implementation differences on CSS specs, like IE vs. Opera vs. Mozilla ... Let alone CJK fonts support problem.
XSL and XSL-FO are less suffer from such problem.


WYSIWYG tools like PageMaker can easily produce nice PDF file, why not use such tool for producing template files or Adobe's FDF.


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