Required PDF for STEP Modules Ballot

[Julian Fowler]

Gerry, Howard, et al

On 2000-12-18 at 11:26, you wrote:

> Howard:
> 
> It is of course possible to print an HTML file directly.

I think that one of the issues is that modules are (appropriately) 
made up of many separate HTML fragments. It is of course possible to 
generate a PDF for each fragment and then use Acrobat Exchange to 
combine these as a single document (time consuming).

> The problem is that you have to have the right version of the right
> browser in order for all the formatting to come out right.

There is no "right" formatting for HTML -- the best you can aim for 
is "as intended".

> But I
> thought the intent of the resolution was that requirements that are
> purely formatting (e.g., font) need not be followed for CDs choosing
> the HTML route.

Agreed -- since the CD level is to ensure consensus on technical 
content formatting should not be an issue as long as the document is 
readable and its presentation does not get in the reader's way.
 
> So what is an "appropriate form"?

Even though the SC4 resolution did not specifically mention PDF, I 
can't think of an alternative.

> Now that Sophie has opened the possibility of going all the way to IS
> with HTML documents, it may be appropriate to think about what
> formatting we *must* have in a published HTML standard, and how we are
> going to achieve it. What features of HTML are we allowed to use? 

I've done a little work on this and I believe that most of the 
requirements for web-based publication of ISO standards can be 
fulfilled by a minimum set of HTML markup (headings, paragraphs, 
figures, tables).
 
> What minimum browser capabilities can we demand from the reader?

A perpetual problem! Fortunately the "browser wars" seem to be behind 
us, and it would be reasonable to require that SC4 standards should 
conform to one of the published HTML DTDs (I guess 3.2 or 4.0). This 
will work on all current browsers that I know of, and should also be 
displayable with minimum information loss on older browsers (I've 
tested some documents as far back as Netscape 2.0).

> I have found that using cascading style sheets and the "class"
> attribute in HTML, it is possible to get the HTML to look close to a
> current generation SC4 document without embedding a lot of formatting
> tags or attributes in the actual HTML document.  (I haven't found a
> way to do footnotes or page headers and footers yet.)

My own experience agrees 100% with this. Tags like <font> are, in any 
case, non-standard. Guidelines for using CSS are clearly required, as 
is a standard .css stylesheet (I'll happily contribute my efforts so 
far if anyone wants to take this task on). A key task is to check 
that documents that employ CSS are also readable without the styles --
 either on an old browser or on one that has stylesheets disabled.

> Regarding XSL, it depends on what you mean by an "appropriate form". 
> XSL is good for making simple transformations between XML documents,
> or for transforming bewteen XML and HTML.  It would be painful to try
> to use XSL to generate PDF or RTF.  It would probably be better to use
> a DSSL engine (e.g., Jade) to generate RTF from an XML document.  But
> as far as I know, this would still be a non-trivial task.

Agreed. I suspect that the solution is much more likely to be a 
"common source" one in which the document content is held in a 
database and then HTML and PDF are alternative output forms (I've 
done this successfully for issues logs, and I assume that any other 
document with repeated structure/content will be amenable to a 
similar approach).

In the meantime, I suggest that satisfying the requirements for a 
printable form should be met by whatever means create PDF at least 
effort to the project team(s), even if the results aren't pretty!

regards
Julian

>   Gerry
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Howard Mason [mailto:howard.mason at baesystems.com]
> > Sent: Monday, December 18, 2000 7:23 AM
> > To: dmprice at us.ibm.com
> > Cc: qc at cme.nist.gov; wg10 at steptools.com; nigel.shaw at eurostep.com
> > Subject: Re: Required PDF for STEP Modules Ballot
> > 
> > 
> > Just for clarification, the SC4 resolution does not require 
> > PDF, just a "printable 
> > version".
> > 
> > Is there anything we can do using XSL or some other XML tool 
> > to automatically 
> > generate an appropriate form with minimum effort?
> > 
> > Thanks 
> > 
> > Howard Mason
> > 


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Julian Fowler, PDT Solutions
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