RE: HTML 4/XML+CSS2 front-end

[Matěj Cepl]

Well, I am not sure, whether you understood me well. Let me explain,
what I mean.

I am very sorry, but this message is LONG (it sometimes happen, that say
much more than I need to do so). So, if you do not want to waste your
time and totally personally and useless junk, please, DO NOT read this.

> -----Původní zpráva-----
> Od:   Valeriy E. Ushakov [SMTP:address@hidden
> Odesláno:     29. prosince 1998 10:39
> Komu: Lout Mailing List
> Předmět:      Re: HTML 4/XML+CSS2 front-end
> 
> On Tue, Dec 29, 1998 at 08:47:56AM -0000, Mat?j Cepl wrote:
> 
> > are there any thoughts for a lout's front-end for specified beasts?
> 
> I don't think this route makes sense.  If you want to target multiple
> formats your best bet (in the long term) is SGML+DSSSL/XML+XSL.  There
> was a lengthy discussion on the list about this an year ago which I
> encourage you to read.
> 
        [MCepl]  Does it make so much difference whether I would be
using HTML4/CSS2 or XML/XSL? Let me explain me a long story, how I came
to lout and all that PS stuff. Originally (BTW, do you care for these
ISO Latin-2 fonts? I can send you the last beta version of them), I
looked for something what would allow me to write easy portable
documents. I mean portable in both senses of the word -- portable
concerning the place of origin and portable concerning its use.

        So, naturally, the first place where I asked for help were
TeXists. They were nice, preaching even better than Bill and John Lennon
combined ("all you need is TeX...") and they were showing to me
beautiful pieces of typography. Well, I tried downloading CsTeX (TeX
with national extensions) somewhen a two years ago -- I spend with that
two full hours over ftp. I tried to install it (it had not installation
program capable of installing from harddrive, so I had to find around
fifteen FDs :-)  and after hundreds of stupid questions, I was not able
to produce any viable output (installation, re-installation and
re-re-installation took me three hours). When asking about problems with
TeXs installation program, the only answer I got, was that it is the
best installation program around and it is very easy to install. Nothing
else :-( So, I gave up.

        In that time, I inveneted my own idea of "TeX of my dreams" --
very small program printing source code on Win GDI driver (I have not
found the beauty of PostScript in that time yet). I am still not
convinced, that it is The Good Thing to have a couple of megabytes of
bitmapped fonts just for producing proprietary format, which must be
again coverted into something different (I know, that TeX originated
when there was no PostScript or anything like it, but it was _TWENTY_
years ago; it is a long time in computer time, you know?).

        Later on, I was converted by Arbor Text's "SGML: Getting
started" guide (see on http://www.arbortext.com/wp.html ) to logical
markup. It really makes a lot of sense to separate structure from
display. So, looked for some viable application and firstly I turned
back to LaTeX (it was around two years after my first TeX-fiasco). I
found somewhere "installation for really stupid folks on one diskette"
and gave it a try. Guess what? It did not work. OK, it made me really
sad.

        So, my idea of the best writing has changed a little bit. The
input would be SGML-like (plus some stylesheet -- but when I gave ust a
very short look to DSSSL, I began to panic -- do you really want me to
learn _such huge_ stuff?) and output probably PostScript (with GhostView
and GhostScript in back of my mind).

        Later on, I found that I was using (without knowing) one very
nice SGML application all the time -- certainly HTML). So, I read NCSA
Beginner's Guide to HTML and found, that HTML is really simple and yet
it works. Wonderfull! I began producing a lot of HTML pages, but fonud
that they are not good for anything where beauty of typography matters
(for example, my not-yet-finished-but-close opus magnum "A Legal Review
of free licences (OP/L and GNU GPL) under the Czech law" -- in Czech
only).

        Therefore, I began looking around again. That is the moment,
when I found lout. It seemed to be simple, it was working (after
preparing my own PS fonts) and it was really not terrible to use. I
rewrote all my paper into lout input code and it worked. BUT,
unfortunately, I found, that there some problems with that:

        1) that the whole thing is just the same as many things in open
source world -- "not yet". It will be really terrible thing when all
bugs will be taken out of it (footnote-mark in the beginning of line is
the most prominent example).

        2) that it has not been widespread as it should be -- which
means, for example, that I would be waiting for many years for Czech
spellchecker for it.

        3) that some constructs like

        @TeX &0.01s u 

        to get just one word "TeXu" (Czech language tends to make
incredible tricks with every word, even non-Czech), did not seem to me
quite "logically marked up" :-) I know, it is probably old unresolved
bug, but well, it is not quite what I expected.

        OK, so I stepped back to HTML and hoped, that some day, somebody
will produce some software, that would fit to my needs.

        Now, the last surprise came, when I began learning of HTML 4.0
(all my previous works were in HTML 3.2). I found, that it is possible
(and rather easy) to make things, as I would like them (or nearly so)
with cascading style sheets. I began to use CSS1, but there are still
serious drwabacks with it. I would like to switch to CSS2 for documents
to be printed, but I am not able to find any software (outside of huge
awfull things like M$ IE 5.0, where I am certain support will be still
less than working and which does not work on so poor computer as my IBM
300GL with _only_ 32MB RAM :-( -- there is Win NT4 here, so even IE 4
does not work.).

        You are saying, that HTML4 does not have a future. Well,
probably you are true, but tell me, where should I find any free
software supporting XML/XSL now. OK, so I shall stay with HTML4/CSS for
awhile, which should be convertible to XML easily.

        Therefore,
        my dream has changed again. It should really tiny program (I
guess not bigger than lout) able to transform valid HTML4/CSS2 (with all
things necessary for printing like "page-break-after: avoid") document
into PostScript. I do not see any reason, why such thing should be
impossible, but unfortunately I do not see anybody able to help me with
it.

        The one possible solution to this problem (not the best) would
if there is HTML4/XML front-end for Lout. Therefore I asked you, whether
you know about anything like this.

                                        have a nice day and sorry for so
terribly long message

                                                                Matthew