4 ms·

I often hear this argument but I haven't been able to grasp its meaning. Is SVG a document format or an application container? I'd say it's definitely not the l

I often hear this argument but I haven't been able to grasp its meaning. Is SVG a document format or an application container? I'd say it's definitely not the latter. But it does allow for precise positioning, right? The same goes for PDF or XPS or any such thing, starting from PostScript. Besides, HTML does allow precise positioning, but nobody really needs it. What everybody needs is a high-level language that fits the domain: fluid 2D interactive layout. CSS is simply not a good attempt to solve it. It's not even bad per se, because a similar model works quite well with XSL-FO. But XSL-FO is always an intermediate step: you take a custom document format (some XML), transform it with XSLT into XSL-FO, and then process XSL-FO to produce a PDF. The HTML lacks this transform step and tries to bolt-on CSS model directly to what must be a custom XML format and this is why it's so awkward.

crispyambulance 7y ago
I remember in the late 90's when XML was hot stuff and there was of xsl and it's simpler cousin, xslt, and a capable mechanism for keeping everything "honest", the xml-schema. For whatever reasons, that never took off. It was promising, but it was mired in over-engineered complexity, the w3c docs looked like a nightmarish "design by committee" mess. I believe the intention was never to actually have to see XML let alone write it by hand. Along with the jetpacks of the year 2000, we were promised magical CASE tools that would handle the details. That fizzled out. Instead XML just became a means for encoding configuration that people typed in by hand, sometimes aided by a crappy intellisense-guided schema. We all grew to hate it. CSS was a great idea on the surface. Compact, not too complex looking: hook into elements by type, class or id, and style them as needed. But for many years it was a half-measure. Browsers behaved differently, and layout was counter-intuitive. And THAT is what I just can't understand. We had models for how layout on user interfaces should work for many years on desktop applications. CSS just didn't care, it was poor for newspaper-like layout and poor for web-app layout. CSS grid is such a refreshing step in the right direction, but why so long in coming?

crispyambulance 7y ago

I remember in the late 90's when XML was hot stuff and there was of xsl and it's simpler cousin, xslt, and a capable mechanism for keeping everything "honest", the xml-schema. For whatever reasons, that never took off. It was promising, but it was mired in over-engineered complexity, the w3c docs looked like a nightmarish "design by committee" mess. I believe the intention was never to actually have to see XML let alone write it by hand. Along with the jetpacks of the year 2000, we were promised magical CASE tools that would handle the details. That fizzled out. Instead XML just became a means for encoding configuration that people typed in by hand, sometimes aided by a crappy intellisense-guided schema. We all grew to hate it. CSS was a great idea on the surface. Compact, not too complex looking: hook into elements by type, class or id, and style them as needed. But for many years it was a half-measure. Browsers behaved differently, and layout was counter-intuitive. And THAT is what I just can't understand. We had models for how layout on user interfaces should work for many years on desktop applications. CSS just didn't care, it was poor for newspaper-like layout and poor for web-app layout. CSS grid is such a refreshing step in the right direction, but why so long in coming?