Response below (one of these glorious days, I can stop using Outlook...) -----Original Message----- From: Glen Mazza [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 7:49 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: hack to avoid memory overflow with tables
>FOP is ultimately a mathematical entity, so we should be able to avoid the matter-of-opinion conclusions that would lead to multiple layout strategies.< While I believe this is generally true, I remain skeptical that there is always a perfect layout strategy available every time. I think this might especially be true in cases of overconstraint relaxing or recovering from anomalous documents. My first impression is that either of these processes will largely be governed by heuristics, and it's my experience that where heuristics are involved, matters of opinion quickly follow. Moreover, is FOP really that far from, say, the HTML rendering engine in a web browser with respect to layout decisions? I see a lot of "interpretations" and "opinions" going on in those engines, which is why two browsers sometimes interpret my HTML table layouts in different ways. >While there can be plenty of discussion of how best to obtain #1 and #2, once it is determined that solution A takes x seconds and solution B takes x + 2 seconds, you tend to go with solution A. So over the long term, multiple layout strategies may not be needed. < They may not, but I think they might. I can safely say that I haven't read all of the FO spec, but I do see the word "may" cropping up from time to time with respect to spec compliance. I don't think we can create a single layout strategy that correctly selects the correct side of that "may" every time. For certain classes of documents (which, for argument's sake, aren't readily detectable in a programmatic way), the choice has to be made, and why not leave that choice in the hands of programmers and operators? I just mention these sorts of things because, all too often, spec compliance eventually becomes a matter of opinion anyway. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
