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Open Stack: ISO Does The Unthinkable. How ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML will break the Web

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:16:23 -0000

Comments:

A summary of my views on ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML and the impact it will have on the futrue of the open web. posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

In August of 2007 we dropped ODF as the da Vinci target conversion format, and moved to the W3C's Compound Document Format (CDF) with an ePUB wrapper.

The reason for this move is that we could not establish a reasonable degree of interoperability with OpenOffice ODF unless Sun supported the five generic eXtensions to ODF needed to hit the high fidelity conversion the da Vinci process is capable of.

Since da Vinci is a clone of the MSOffice OOXML compatibility Kit, we use the same internal conversion process where imbr (in-memory-binary-representation) is converted to another format: imbr <> OOXML or, imbr <> RTF.

While it's entirely compliant to eXtend ODF, without Sun's changes to OpenOffice ODF the application-platform-vendor independent interoperability end users expect would be meaningless.

The problem as we see it is this; it is impossible to do a high fidelity conversion between two application specific XML formats.

It is however quite possible to do a conversion between an application specific format and a generic (application-platform-vendor independent) format.

Tags: css davinci interoperability msoffice odf ooxml xaml xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

Is HTML in a Race to the Bottom? A Large-Scale Survey of Open Web Formats

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:53:06 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The "race to the bottom" is a familiar phenomenon that occurs when multiple standards compete for acceptance. In this environment, the most lenient standard usually attracts the greatest support (acceptance, usage, and so on), leading to a competition among standards to be less stringent. This also tends to drive competing standards toward the minimum possible level of quality. One key prerequisite for a race to the bottom is an unregulated market because regulators mandate a minimum acceptable quality for standards and sanction those who don't comply.^1,2 In examining current HTML standards, we've come to suspect that a race to the bottom could, in fact, be occurring because so many competing versions of HTML exist.

At this time, some nine different versions of HTML (including its successor, XHTML) are supported as W3C standards, with the most up-to-date being XHTML 1.1. Although some versions are very old and lack some of the newer versions' capabilities, others are reasonably contemporaneous. In particular, HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 both have "transitional" and "strict" versions. Clearly, the W3C's intent is to provide a pathway to move from HTML 4.01 to XHTML 1.1, and the transitional versions are steps on that path. It also aims to develop XHTML standards that support device independence (everything from desktops to cell phones), accessibility, and internationalization. As part of this effort, HTML 4.01's presentational elements (used to adjust the appearance of a page for older browsers that don't support style sheets) are eliminated in XHTML 1.1.

Our concern is that Web site designers might decline to follow the newer versions' more stringent formatting requirements and will instead keep using transitional versions. To determine if this is likely, we surveyed the top 100,000 most popular Web sites to discover what versions of HTML are in widespread use.

The summary statement glosses over the value of a highly structured portable XML document. A value that goes far beyond the strict separation of content and presentation. The portable document model is the essential means by which information is exchanged over the Web. It is the key to Web interop.

Up till now, Web docuemnts have been very limited. With the advent of XHTML-2, CSS-3, SVG, XForms and CDF (Compound Document Framework for putting these pieces together), the W3C has provisioned the Web with the means of publishing and exchanging highly interactive but very complex docuemnts. The Web documents of the future will be every bit as complex as the publishing industry needs.
The transition of complex and data rich desktop office suite documents to the Web has been non existent up till now. With ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML, Microsoft is now ready to transition billions of business process rich "office" documents to the Web.
This transition is accomplished by a very clever conversion component included in the MSOffice SDK. MS Developers can easily convert OOXML documents to Web ready XAML documents, adn back again, without loss of presentation fidelity, or data. No matter what the complexity!

The problem here is that while MSOffice-OOXML is now an ISO/IEC International Standard, XAML "fixed/flow" is a proprietary format useful only to the IE-8 browser, the MS Web Stack (Exchange, SharePoint, MS SQL, and Windows Server), and the emerging MS Cloud.

Apache, J2EE, Mozilla Firefox, Adobe and Open Source Servers in general will not be able to render these complex, business process rich, office suite documents. MSOffice-OOXML itself is far to complicated and filled with MS application-platform-vendor specific dependencies to be usefully converted to Open Web XHTML-CSS, ePUB or CDF.

XAML itself is only the tip of the iceberg. The Microsoft Web Stack also implements Silverlight, Smart Tags and other WPF - .NET technologies not available as open standards. Silverlight is a proprietary alternative to SVG and Flash technologies. Smart Tags and the LINQ meta search mechanism are alternatives to RDF, RDFa and SPARQL. And of course, XAML "fixed/flow" is a proprietary alternative to advanced XHTML-CSS, CDF, iPAPER, FlashPaper and PDF.

Web formats are important. This survey sadly only begins to scrape the surface of the interoperability problems the future of the Open Web faces. ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML is going to initiate a great transition of legacy client/server business process systems to a new model of highly efficient, barrier free and cloud ready client/ Web-Stack /server systems.

Hope this helps,

~ge~
posted by garyedwards

Tags: cdf css html ooxml xaml xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

IE aims to embrace the web again | Technology | The Guardian

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:42:35 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

I asked Hachamovitch, who has led the Explorer team since 2003, why it has taken Microsoft so long to address these deficiencies. "It comes down to what we were doing with our time," he said. "Between 2001 and 2003 we were building what you experience now as Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight."

These technologies display not HTML, the language of web pages, but XAML, Microsoft's proprietary code for creating rich visual content.

Tags: css hachamovitch html ie microsoft silverlight w3c wpf xaml xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

Unbreaking the Web: IE 8 passes ACID 2 Test | John Resig

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:17:38 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

IMHO, the key to Microsoft's OOXML strategy can be seen in the recently released MSOffice SDK. The SDK provides a component for the fluid conversion of OOXML to something called fixed/flow. The fixed part of this interesting conjunction is also known as XPS, which is designed as a proprietary alternative to PDF. The flow part is a fascinating and highly proprietary replacement for (X)HTML - CSS.

Reading further through the MSOffice SDK, one can't help but be amazed at the lack of W3C technologies; especially (X)HTML, CSS, XForms and SVG. What we have instead is an entangling cascade of stuff like OOXML, fixed/flow, silverlight, XAML, and WPF. And then there is that recent promise of other high volume API's probably delivered through future Exchange, SharePoint, and MS SQL Server SDK's.

So, at the end of the day, what are we looking at here? IMHO, Microsoft has figured out that the smart thing to do is leverage and extend their existing desktop monopoly into the next generation of cloud computing where the Internet platform rules.

To pull this off, they have a number of problems to overcome; not the least of which is that they need to catch a break on anti trust, and, get OOXML through ISO. And oh yeah, there's that little problem that Windows can't do cloud computing.

Tags: cdf css iso microsoft odf ooxml w3c xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

Open XML trumps ODF in document format fight, consulting firm says

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:52:45 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The OpenDocument Format (ODF) remains "more of an anti-Microsoft political statement than an objective technology selection" by users, according to a report released Monday by analysts at Burton Group, who recommend that companies adopt Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML document format whether or not it is approved as an ISO standard next month.

Tags: burtongorup cdf css odf okelly ooxml w3c xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

Standard or Not, OOXML Has a Lot Going for It | Redmond Developer News - Desmond

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:52:45 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Ultimately, O'Kelly said it best in his report: "The relative success of ODF and OOXML, in any case, will be determined more by its utility and which community effectively exploits W3C standards than it will by one or the other more effectively navigating through ISO standards procedures."

Tags: burtongroup cdf css desmond odf okelly ooxml opendocument w3c xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

CIO Wakeup Call: Burton Group ODF/OOXML report | The CIO Weblog

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:52:45 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Although most of the ruckus over the paper has focused on the prediction that OOXML will beat out ODF, the more intriguing and meaningful conclusion is in fact that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) model, built on open and broadly accepted web standards already in broad use, will in fact "...be more influential and pervasive than ODF and OOXML." This implicit acknowledgment that the SaaS delivery model will dominate productivity and document storage applications is less supportive of Microsoft's approaches than many of the documents detractors care to acknowledge and suggests the entire debate is essentially a sideshow.

CIOs who are truly concerned with data preservation and open standards need to take a hard look at Microsoft's historical business practices and the remaining questions hanging over OOXML and ask themselves if it's worth making such a major transition to a format that is fraught with the same potential for vendor (rather than consumer) control in the future. SaaS options, it's worth noting, hardly escape this issue, so regardless of the very real potential that SaaS will eclipse any of the stand-alone office applications that are currently involved in this debate, it's still going to be necessary to pick a format for long-term, corporate control of vital data and documents.

Tags: burtongorup cdf cio css ny odf okelly ooxml w3c xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

Burton Group Responds to Ars Technica's Angry ODF/OOXML Rebuttal

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:52:45 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Five days ago Ars Technica issued its view of the Burton Group ODF/OOXML report and made it clear that they disagreed with its findings, going with the headline, "Analyst group slams ODF, downplays Microsoft ISO abuses."

We've had some questions from Burton Group clients and others about the article, so I thought it would be worthwhile to go through where we agree, where we disagree, where Ars Technica mischaracterizes what we said, and where it's wrong.

Tags: burtongroup cdf css odf okelly ooxml w3c xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

Bluster keeps the ODF / OOXML debate afloat | BetaNews

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:52:45 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

the Group went one step further, if only that far: It advised clients to steer clear of the whole format superiority debate, in order to avoid getting dragged down into what could be called "Office politics."

"ODF is insufficient for complex real-world enterprise requirements, and it is indirectly controlled by Sun Microsystems, despite also being an ISO standard," the Burton Group's Guy Creese and Peter O'Kelly wrote. "It's possible that IBM, Novell, and other vendors may be able to put ODF on a more customer-oriented trajectory in the future and more completely integrate it with the W3C content model, but for now ODF should be seen as more of an anti-Microsoft political statement than an objective technology selection."

Tags: burtongroup cdf css ibm iso microsoft odf okelly ooxml opendocument openxml sun w3c xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

Brian Jones: Open XML Formats : Mapping documents in the binary format (.doc; .xls; .ppt) to the Open XML format

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:52:44 -0000

Comments:

Well well well. We knew that IBM had access to the secret binary blueprints back in 2006. Now we know that Sun ALSO had access!

And why is this important? In June of 2006, Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez asked the OpenDocument Foundation's da Vinci Group to work with IBM on developing the da Vinci ODF plug-in clone of Microsoft's OOXML Compatibility Pack plug-in. When we met with IBM they were insistent that the only way OASIS ODF could establish sufficient compatibility with MSOffice and the billions of binary documents would be to have the secret blueprints open.

Even after we explained to IBM that da Vinci uses the same internal conversion process that the OOXML plug-in used to convert binaries, IBM continued to insist that opening up the secret binaries was a primary objective of the OASIS ODF community.

For sure this was important to IBM and Sun, but the secret binaries were of no use to us. da Vinci didn't need them. What da Vinci needed instead was a subset of ODF designed for the conversion of those billions of binary documents! A need opposed by Sun.

Sun of course would spend the next year developing their own ODF plug-in for MSOffice. But here's the thing: it turns out that Sun had complete access to the secret binary blueprints dating back to 2006!!!!!!

So even though IBM and Sun have had access to the blueprints since 2006, they have been unable to provide effective conversions to ODF!

This validates a point the da Vinci group has been trying to make since June of 2006: the problem of perfecting a high fidelity conversion between the billions of binaries and ODF has nothing to do with access to the secret binary blueprints. The real issue is that ODF was NOT designed for the conversion of those binary documents.

It is true that one could eXtend ODF to achieve the needed compatibility. But one has to be very careful before taking this route. The Sun - ODF covenant not to sue specifically exempts eXtensions to ODF not involving Sun! Meaning, if the interoperable subset of ODF was designed and implemented without Sun-OASIS participation and approval, the covenant not to sue does not apply. Developers beware! You cannot safely eXtend ODF without Sun's permission.

Here is the relevant text from Sun's covenant: "Sun irrevocably covenants that, subject solely to the reciprocity requirement described below, it will not seek to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification, or of any subsequent version thereof ("OpenDocument Implementation") in which development Sun participates to the point of incurring an obligation, as defined by the rules of OASIS, to grant (or commit to grant) patent licenses or make equivalent non-assertion covenants."

The obscurity of intent is masked in clever legalese. Which means, bring your legal team if you want to eXtend ODF, and prepare to argue.

My point is that this covenant could have been written clear and direct to say that Sun will not sue anyone for any reason related to ODF. But they didn't do that.

People will of course wonder why ODF is so bad that it might a as well be ZERO interop? The answer to this question is complicated, but a good place to start is to observe that, just as OOXML is an XML encoded dump of MSOffice in-memory-binary-representation, ODF is an XML encoded dump of OpenOffice/StarOffice in-memory-binary-representation.

The interop problem truly kicks in at the level of specifying this encoding. The Ecma and OASIS technical committees are responsible for fully specifying the OOXML and ODF. This means a complete syntax and semantic description needed to properly implement the specs. ODF and OOXML share one very big fault; the presentation-layout layer (or styles) is not fully specified! We have the syntax but not the semantics describing how layout works. This is particularly problematic in that both ODF and OOXML are application specific dumps. While they each do a good job separating content from presentation, neither fully specifies the presentation layer. Nor is the presentation layer portable in the sense that a CDF XHTML + CSS separation is portable.

And it is the presentation layer that binds the formats to their originating applications. MSOffice has one way of implementing basic document structures like lists, fields, tables, sections and page dynamics, and, OpenOffice has another. That these application differences are embodied in the formats creates an enormous interoperability problem. Applications can exchange content, but break when trying to interpret another applications presentation-layout layer. Especially when that presentation layer is under specified!

There were three aspects of ODF 1.0 that were under specified: numbered lists, formulas, and styles (presentation-layout). ODF 1.2 attempts to fix the formula problem, but does nothing for styles. The numbered lists "interop" problem was not fixed, but exacerbated.

So even though the binary blueprints were released two years ago to Sun and IBM, we have yet to see any improvement in conversion fidelity able to crack the lock MSOffice workgroup-workflow business processes have in the marketplace. Writing a subset of ODF enabling us to achieve that high fidelity conversion has a legal cloud hanging over the process. And all of these concerns are shadowed by the fact that neither OOXML or ODF have fully specified their presentation layers!

No wonder the W3C's formats are attracting so much attention.

~ge~
posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The second issue we had feedback on was an interest in the mapping from the binary formats into the Open XML formats. The thought here was that the most effective way to help people with this was to create an open source translation project to allow binary documents (.doc; .xls; .ppt) to be translated into Open XML. So we proposed the creation of a new open source project that would map a document written using the legacy binary formats to the Open XML formats. TC45 liked this suggestion, and here was the TC45 response to the national body comments:

We believe that Interoperability between applications conforming to DIS 29500 is established at the Office Open XML-to- Office Open XML file construct level only.

And here i was betting that the blueprints to the secret binaries would be released the weekend before the September 2nd, 2007 ISO vote on OOXML! Looks like Microsoft saved the move for when they really had to use it; jus tweeks before the February ISO Ballot Resolution Meetings set to resolve the Sept 2nd issues.

The truth is that years of reverse engineering have depleted the value of keeping the binary blueprints secret. It's true that interoperability with MSOffice in the past was near entirely dependent on understanding the secret binaries. Today however, with the rapid emergence of the Exchange/SharePoint juggernaught, interop with MSOffice is no longer the core issue. Now we have to compete with E/S, and it is the E/S interfaces, protocols and document API's and dependencies tha tmust be reverse engineered.

The E/S juggernaught is now surging to 70% or more of the market. These near monopoly levels of market penetration is game changing. One must reverse engineer or license the .NET libraries to crack the interop problem. And this time it's not just MSOffice. Today one must crack into the MS Stack whose core is tha tof MSOffice <> E/S.

So why not release the secret binary blueprints? If that's the cost of getting the application, platform and vendor specific OOXML through ISO, then it's a small price to pay for your own international standard.
posted by garyedwards

Tags: burtongroup cdf css ibm iso microsoft odf okelly ooxml opendocument openxml sun w3c xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

CDI WICD 2.0

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:52:44 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

This document defines a generic language-independent processing model for combining arbitrary document formats.

The Compound Document Framework is language-independent. While it is clearly meant to serve as the basis for integrating W3C's family of XML formats within its Interaction Domain (e.g., MathML, SMIL, SVG, VoiceXML, XForms, XHTML, XSL) with each other, together with CSS and the DOM; it can also be used to integrate non-W3C formats with W3C formats or integrate non-W3C formats with other non-W3C formats.

1.1. Conformance

Everying in this specification is normative except for diagrams, examples, notes and sections marked non-normative.

The key words must, must not, required, shall, shall not, should, should not, recommended, may and optional in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

This specification defines the following classes of products:

conforming implementation: A user agent that implements all interfaces described in this specification and follows all must-, required- and shall-level of critera in this specification.
conforming document: A document that follows all must-, required- and shall-level of critera in this specification that apply to document authors.
conforming authoring tool: One that produces conforming documents.

Tags: cdf css svg w3c wicd xforms xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

Independent study advises IT planners to go OOXML | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:52:43 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

“ODF represents laudable design and standards work. It’s a clean and useful design, but it’s appropriate mostly for relatively unusual scenarios in which full Microsoft Office file format fidelity isn’t a requirement. Overall, ODF addresses only a subset of what most organizations do with productivity applications today.”

The report continues:

“ODF is insufficient for complex real-world enterprise requirements, and it is indirectly controlled by Sun Microsystems, despite also being an ISO standard. It’s possible that IBM, Novell, and other vendors may be able to put ODF on a more customer-oriented trajectory in the future and more completely integrate it with the W3C content model, but for now ODF should be seen as more of an anti-Microsoft political statement than an objective technology selection.”

Mary Jo takes on the recently released Burton Group Report comparing OOXML and ODF. Peter O'Kelly, one of the Burton Group authors, once famously said, "ODF is a great format if you live in an alternative universe where MSOffice doesn't exist!"

This observation speaks to the core problem facing ODF and those who seek to implement the ODF standard: ODF was not designed for the conversion of MSOffice documents. Nor was ODF designed to work with MSOffice applications.

Another way of saying this is to state that ODF was not designed to be interoperable with MSOffice documents, applications and bound processes. The truth is that ODF was designed for OpenOffice/StarOffice. It is an application specific format.

Both OOXML and ODF do a good job of separating content from presentation (style). The problem is that the presentation - layout layers of both ODF and OOXML remains bound to specific applications producing it. While the content layers are entirely portable and can be exchanged without information loss, the presentation layers can not.

Microsoft makes no bones about the application specific design and purpose of OOXML. It's stated right in the Ecma 376 charter that OOXML was designed to be compatible with MSOffice and the billions of binary documents in MSOffice specific binary formats. The situation however is much more confusing with ODF.

ODF is often promoted as being application, platform and vendor independent. After five years of development though, the OASIS ODF TC has been unable to strip ODF of it's OpenOffice/StarOffice specific aspects. ODF 1.0 - ISO 26300 had three areas that were under specified; meaning these areas were described in syntax only, and lacked the full semantics demanded by interoperable implementations. Only OpenOffice and StarOffice code base applications are able to exchange documents with an acceptable fidelity.

The three under specified areas of ODF are: Lists (numbered), Formulas, and Layout - Presentation (styles).

ODF v 1.2 will deal with the formula problem, but this version is still in committee - perhaps years away from ISO approval. The List model in ODF 1.2 further aggravates the existing interop problems. And the presentation-layout problem is not dealt with at all. Meaning, we can expect the ODF Interop problems to continue far into the future.

There is a solution, but not what people think.

Most observers think that it's possible to harmonize ODF and OOXML. This is wishful thinking. Since both ODF and OOXML are application bound at the presentation layer, the only way to harmonize them would be to harmonize the applications themselves. Meaning; alter how the applications implement basic document structures such as lists, tables, sections, fields and page dynamics so that the implementation models are similar. This would involve serious compromise of what each application provider considers to be innovative feature sets.

Efforts to harmonize at the application layer will not work. The vendors, Sun and Microsoft, are unlikely to compromise on their innovative differentials. And there is no hope of changing the application specific formats unless and until the application providers consent.

The solution that will work is that of relying on converters. While everyone wants MSOffice to implement ODF, this is structurally impossible unless a subset of ODF is designed for this purpose. And the OASIS ODF TC has already rejected six different subset proposals designed for compatibility with MSOffice and the conversion of billions of MS binary documents.

It's also impossible to convert from one application specific format into another without significant information loss. Maybe if Microsoft and Sun were to completely specify the presentation - layout layers this problem could be lessened. But that's unlikely to happen.

So what to do?

Convert to a generic format designed for universal interoperability!

The W3C's CDF was designed for universal interop. It is totally application independent, building on combining basic document structures within the XHTML - CSS - XForms - SVG framework. CSS in particular is an extremely portable presentation layer!

Given that the large application vendors are unlikely to compromise, the W3C's CDF may be the only solution possible. The idea being to convert MSOffice documents (binary and OOXML) to CDF, and, similarly convert OpenOffice/StarOffice ODF documents to that same CDF profile.

At this higher level of Web ready CDF, there is universal interoperability. But the solution does put incredible pressure on the conversion layers.

This approach looks very similar to the SOA model where XML connectors are routinely used to wire together legacy systems. A common XML schema is used as the conversion layer connecting many black box information systems, with each connector having to be written and implemented. From the common schema, the legacy systems can be wired into emerging Web information systems, creating a fairly good information flow. Interoperability between systems might not be perfect (it depends on the quality of the individual converters – connectors), but it is usually far beyond the zero interop of previous generations!

What i'm suggesting is that document interoperability can be achieved following a similar route to that of SOA. The legacy applications can be wired together using an advanced conversion layer connecting the applications to a common XML configuration. The W3C's CDF has the flexibility and reach to capture the richness of our desktop productivity legacy. The SOA approach allows us to continue to leverage that desktop application value without having to rip out and replace. Which is costly and disruptive to existing business processes.

~ge~
posted by garyedwards

Tags: burtongorup cdf css garyedwards maryjo odf okelly ooxml w3c xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

(WO/1995/013585) COMPOUND DOCUMENT FRAMEWORK

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:44:52 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Summary of the Invention It is an. object of the present invention to provide a document processing system in which object-oriented frameworks are utilized to implement particular document processing techniques, including an object-oriented compound document system. These and other objects of the present invention are realized by a document framework which supports at the system level a variety of compound document processing functions. The framework provides system level support of collaboration, linking, eternal undo, and content based retrieval. These and other objects are carried out by system level support of document changes, annotation through model and linking, anchors, model hierarchies, enhanced copy and pasting, command objects, and a generic retrieval framework.

Tags: cdf css xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

How Does Compound Document Framework Benefit Us? - Axistive.com - Assistive Technology News Website - How Does Compound Document Framework Benefit Us? - Assistive Technologies and Assistive Devices for people with a disability

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:44:52 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

How does Compound Document Framework Work?

The Compound Document framework introduces concepts that are implemented by a number of new classes. The Compound Document framework implements a new, and more versatile, type of document and defines several new classes to support and manage this compound document, therefore its design is in this format document, command and selection, data, storage. The class structure of the Compound Document framework builds on the structure laid down by the Basic Document framework. Therefore, this section introduces only the classes new to the Compound Document framework.

Tags: cdf css xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

» Why XHTML and CSS? | UK Web Hosting | Linux Windows Server Tutorials | PHP MySQL Service

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:44:51 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Title: Why XHTML and CSS?

Simply put, XHTML and CSS has an indefinate bond together, they work together perfectly and they shape everything for the prospect of the future Internet.

Tags: css design xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

Cheers for the Prince - More Cagle Championing CDF | O'Reilly XML Blog

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:16:10 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

In other words, I would like to lay out my printable documents in a way that’s familiar to me, for which I have tools that can support this and that can easily be changed without having to do a search and replace through a hundred distance instances of a paragraph. In short, I want CSS, acting on XHTML, generating my printed pages as readily as it displays that content to the screen.

A previous blog from Michael Day about PrinceXML reminded me that I hadn’t had a chance to play with it. My previous experiences with XHTML to PDF conversion were, to put it bluntly, terrifying, and so, as I was downloading the JAR file I wasn’t expecting a lot. When I tried it, I wasn’t disappointed … I was stunned. I had taken an article that I’d recently written for XML.com and run it through Prince. It digested the ten page article and cranked out a PDF in under a second, and the quality was better than anything I’d been able to get with a straight DocBook/FO/PDF rendering.

I looked up the documentation, and found that it supported the CSS 3.0 page rendering set, as well as support for columns (including columnar rules), it could be used to print SVG content embedded or linked to the main XHTML document, and it included a nice set of extension properties for handling headers and footers, internal links, rounded borders, and the full panoply of CSS selectors including nth-child (which seemingly no one supports), content search and the whole gamut of pseudo-classes.

Tags: cdf css prince xhtml xml

Posted by: garyedwards

Prince: What's New - Docuemnt Publishing on Steroids with XHTML - CSS 3.0 (CDF+)

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:06:40 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Prince is a computer program that converts XML and HTML into PDF documents.
Prince can read many XML formats, including XHTML and SVG.
Prince formats documents according to style sheets written in CSS.

Standards support
HTML, CSS, SVG, MathML
Web enabled
Load documents, style sheets, images and fonts over HTTP
Publishing features
Hyphenation, crop marks, columns, page floats and footnotes
Eye candy
Rounded borders, small caps, CMYK and RGBA colors

Tags: cdf css w3c xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

CSS: Current Work - Flock

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 01:33:29 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Cascading Style Sheets
Current Work

Tags: css w3c

Posted by: garyedwards