With a simple.xsl script, XSLT can transform any XML source into formatting objects (XML namespace fo:; see http://xml.apache.org for more.) FO's are implemented in XML; they allow you to set up page templates and specify layout, so you can convert your XSL to a platform-neutral layout description language. The FO spec is a text-description standard, similar to TeX in its intent. After you have FOs, the FO backend converts them, currently to PDF, in the (quite) beta FO tool, but other backends are possible (it could even convert to LaTex). The FO standard is the result of many years of work by SGML hero James Clark and others, and it's attractive because it allows markup technologies to work interoperably. The same XML can be parsed with XSL/T and transformed to generate HTML, another XML document, or a formatting objects document. It really is a great solution when you're managing a lot of arbitrary data (say, 10 megs of technical documentation) and you want to sort, index, annotate, or otherwise muck with the corpus of text with which you're working. Remember that XML isn't just intended to be turned into HTML; it's a data description language, as appropriate for sharing data between databases as it is for transforming into Web pages. LaTeX is BEAUTIFUL, but its ultimate intent is not to create active, smart documents, but to create beautiful books. LaTeX would offer a nice-looking Web, but not a strongly interconnected, incredibly flexible one.
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Paul Ford
Look at it! The beta download is ~340K! Small app size is a true Amiga legacy. Even if, as Paul Nolan says, the demo version is missing some functionality, it won't balloon to the GIMP's 4-8 megs source download, plus GTK. It runs out of the box, no compile for the most recent version, no strange errors, no ungainly plugin structure. Photogenics is quick and responsive. The menu system makes sense within minutes, not hours. The kitchen sink is not to be found anywhere in here. It's worth $99. This is not to trash The GIMP, which I use regularly. The GIMP would be worth at least $500+ to me, open source or not, if I could buy a pre-packaged working system with a manual, easy RPM install, better color handling, and an organized menu system, and all the plugins working together. The GIMP is beautiful, but there's too much there, and it's not tucked away like EMACS, where you can learn as you go. And Paul Nolan's windowing toolkit is cool.
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With a simple .xsl script, XSLT can transform any XML source into formatting objects (XML namespace fo:; see http://xml.apache.org for more.) FO's are implemented in XML; they allow you to set up page templates and specify layout, so you can convert your XSL to a platform-neutral layout description language. The FO spec is a text-description standard, similar to TeX in its intent. After you have FOs, the FO backend converts them, currently to PDF, in the (quite) beta FO tool, but other backends are possible (it could even convert to LaTex). The FO standard is the result of many years of work by SGML hero James Clark and others, and it's attractive because it allows markup technologies to work interoperably. The same XML can be parsed with XSL/T and transformed to generate HTML, another XML document, or a formatting objects document. It really is a great solution when you're managing a lot of arbitrary data (say, 10 megs of technical documentation) and you want to sort, index, annotate, or otherwise muck with the corpus of text with which you're working. Remember that XML isn't just intended to be turned into HTML; it's a data description language, as appropriate for sharing data between databases as it is for transforming into Web pages. LaTeX is BEAUTIFUL, but its ultimate intent is not to create active, smart documents, but to create beautiful books. LaTeX would offer a nice-looking Web, but not a strongly interconnected, incredibly flexible one.
--
Paul Ford
Look at it! The beta download is ~340K! Small app size is a true Amiga legacy. Even if, as Paul Nolan says, the demo version is missing some functionality, it won't balloon to the GIMP's 4-8 megs source download, plus GTK. It runs out of the box, no compile for the most recent version, no strange errors, no ungainly plugin structure. Photogenics is quick and responsive. The menu system makes sense within minutes, not hours. The kitchen sink is not to be found anywhere in here. It's worth $99. This is not to trash The GIMP, which I use regularly. The GIMP would be worth at least $500+ to me, open source or not, if I could buy a pre-packaged working system with a manual, easy RPM install, better color handling, and an organized menu system, and all the plugins working together. The GIMP is beautiful, but there's too much there, and it's not tucked away like EMACS, where you can learn as you go. And Paul Nolan's windowing toolkit is cool.