Well, Peter, no, I haven't written something this direct - yet. My trust in their responsiveness is at an ebb; they don't answer much communication, of any nature, quickly, so I doubt that they will answer a more critical email at all.
FWIW I consider all of the editors to be way more experienced than me, when it comes to documents, and publishing, and so forth. I don't equate that with expertise in math, or programming, or technical writing. Number one, trained technical writers should write technical docs - a whole bunch of W3C recommendations prove that. _I_ am not very good at writing technical docs; I get windy and abstruse. That's why I don't get paid to write docs. :-) Every XSL-FO implementation has a different treatment of "reference-orientation". I keep harping on this, I know. In fact, I think _my_ interpretation is correct, and almost everyone else is wrong. I think that because I read the English in the spec. I know that sounds arrogant, but I have told the editors before that I'll implement according to the letter, not the spirit. If they wish to argue that the language says differently than what I think, that's their prerogative. There is a better procedure for turning out specs. The W3C hasn't twigged. Good companies in the industry already know it. It's invite the customers/clients in, get them to hash things out with the programmers and technical writers, and then let the latter two groups turn out a good document, or a good implementation. Or both. In this case the experts are the customers; we have a confused spec because they thought they were the programmers and writers as well. Arved > -----Original Message----- > From: Peter B. West [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: February 22, 2003 8:23 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Markers in areas > > > Arved Sandstrom wrote: > > They are not connected concepts, Mark. I originally put in the code for > > lineage pairs, and also started the implementation for markers. So I can > > assure you that they are completely unrelated. For what it's worth, > > subsequent contributors have significantly improved on marker > support, so I > > am only commenting from the viewpoint of my knowledge of the spec. > > > > I made a few comments in my reply to Joerg. I have a degree in > physics, and > > most of a Masters in physical oceanography. I see considerable > mathematical > > anarchy in the XSL spec, some degree of mathematical naivete, > and lots of > > confusion. My forte is not logic, based on my background, but > even a physics > > guy can dissect the pseudo-logic in that spec. I think plenty of other > > people have also separated the wheat from the chaff as far as > that document > > is concerned...I think we are due for a rewrite, with lots of the > > pretentious math excised, and replaced with plain language. > > Arved, > > Hear, hear. Arved, have you told the editors this directly? If not, > please do. > > -- > Peter B. West [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/ > "Lord, to whom shall we go?" > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
