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Implementation Plan

xmlroff releases happen on or about the first of each month.

The "first" of the month drifts a bit, and some months are longer than others, since xmlroff progresses from contributions made voluntarily by people working in their spare time.

If you want timely releases of new FOs and properties, the best way to get them is to contribute to xmlroff yourself. You might not be able to contribute C code, there's still many other ways you can contribute. Every contributor is acknowledged, since it will take more than just code slingers to make xmlroff a success.

Big Itches of xmlroff Development

The main technical challenge for the xmlroff project is to implement the XSL Recommendation. We still have a way to go. Other factors such as usability, speed, reliability, etc. are also real challenges.

Since your contributions to xmlroff (and everyone else's) are voluntary, you are free to scratch your particular itch and contribute as you see fit. However, if we all scratch different itches, we risk never completely finishing the big jobs.

Accordingly, we maintain a list of "big itches" that we most want to scratch. By focusing on a few areas, we can make tangible progress in a single release.

Test against DocBook test suite
region-before and region-after
Cairo backend
Whitespace handling
Page number cross-references
Developer documentation

Proposed Implementation Sequence

To the extent that we can plan the implementation when progress:

Is by voluntary contribution
Often occurs in response to bug reports or stated needs
Covers more areas than implementing FOs and properties

there is a proposed implementation sequence.

Implementation is proposed to happen in several phases, each of which covers multiple stages. The last step in any phase is reassessment of which stages to implement in the following phase.

Phase	Description	Stages		Details
Phase	Description	From	To	Details
1	Minimal	1	4	Minimal formatting. Mimimal implementation of simple page master, blocks with border and padding, font properties, and bidirectional text.
2	Lists and tables	5	7	Lists and tables.
3	Complex pages	8	11	Page regions, footnotes, multiple columns.
4	Additional objects	12	16	Leader, external graphic, etc.
5	Alternate pages	17	19	Repeating and conditional page masters, floats. This is the minimum necessary for "real" formatting.
6	The rest	20	42	Other extended formatting objects as well as additional properties required for extended and complete conformance with the XSL CR.

Many formatting objects and, especially, many properties need to be implemented in some minimal fashion well before their full implementation is scheduled for completion. In addition, this implementation sequence assumes that once a property is implemented for the named formatting object, the property is also, as part of implementing those other formatting objects, implemented at the same or subsequent stages for other formatting objects with that property.

Some formatting objects are implemented over multiple stages, with additional properties being added each time. If so, the second and subsequent occurrences of the formatting objects in successive stages are shown as emphasised text.

The XSL Recommendation defines three conformance levels:

Level	Description
Basic	Includes the set of formatting objects and properties needed to support a minimum level of pagination or aural rendering.
Extended	Includes everything else, except for shorthands. It is intended for applications whose goal is to provide sophisticated pagination.
Complete	Includes everything.

The implementation stages are shown in the following table. The background colour of a formatting object or property indicates its conformance level.

Properties and formatting objects with "Yes" in the "Implemented" column have been implemented.

Stage	Formatting Object	New Property/Trait	Implemented	Capability
1	root		Yes	Basic pages containing blocks of text. No font property support.
	layout-master-set		Yes
	simple-page-master	master-name	Yes
		page-height	Yes
		page-width	Yes
		margin-top	Yes
		margin-bottom	Yes
		margin-left	Yes
		margin-right	Yes
		space-before	Yes
		space-after	Yes
		start-indent	Yes
		end-indent	Yes
	region-body		Yes
	declarations		Yes
	page-sequence	format	Yes
		grouping-separator	Yes
		grouping-size	Yes
		letter-value	Yes
	flow	flow-name	Yes
	block	id	Yes
		role	Yes
		source-document	Yes
	wrapper		Yes
2	block	background-color	Yes	Additional formatting of blocks of text. Still no font property support.
		border-after-color	Yes
		border-after-style	Yes
		border-after-width	Yes
		border-before-color	Yes
		border-before-style	Yes
		border-before-width	Yes
		border-bottom-color	Yes
		border-bottom-style	Yes
		border-bottom-width	Yes
		border-end-color	Yes
		border-end-style	Yes
		border-end-width	Yes
		border-left-color	Yes
		border-left-style	Yes
		border-left-width	Yes
		border-right-color	Yes
		border-right-style	Yes
		border-right-width	Yes
		border-start-color	Yes
		border-start-style	Yes
		border-start-width	Yes
		border-top-color	Yes
		border-top-style	Yes
		border-top-width	Yes
		break-after	Yes
		break-before	Yes
		color	Yes
		keep-together.within-column	Yes
		keep-together.within-page	Yes
		keep-with-next.within-column	Yes
		keep-with-next.within-page	Yes
		keep-with-previous.within-column	Yes
		keep-with-previous.within-page	Yes
		orphans	Yes
		padding-after	Yes
		padding-before	Yes
		padding-bottom	Yes
		padding-end	Yes
		padding-left	Yes
		padding-right	Yes
		padding-start	Yes
		padding-top	Yes
		text-align	Yes
		text-indent	Yes
		widows	Yes
3	block	font-family	Yes	Basic font properties
		font-size	Yes
		font-stretch	Yes
		font-style	Yes
		font-variant	Yes
		font-weight	Yes
4	character	character	Yes	Unicode bidirectional algorithm support and correct baseline munging
	bidi-override	direction	Yes
	bidi-override	unicode-bidi	Yes
	inline	baseline-shift	Yes
	simple-page-master	writing-mode	Yes
5	inline	alignment-adjust		Inline spacing, alignment, and wrapping
		alignment-baseline
		dominant-baseline
		keep-together.within-line
		keep-with-next.within-line
		keep-with-previous.within-line
		line-height
		space-start
		space-end
	block	line-stacking-strategy	Yes
	block	wrap-mode
6	list-block	provisional-distance-between-starts	Yes	Lists
	list-block	provisional-label-separation	Yes
	list-item		Yes
	list-item-body		Yes
7	table	block-progression-dimension		Basic table formatting. Only "fixed" table layout is supported.
		border-after-precedence
		border-before-precedence
		border-end-precedence
		border-start-precedence
		inline-progression-dimension	Yes
		width	Yes
	table-column	column-number	Yes
		column-width	Yes
		number-columns-repeated	Yes
		number-columns-spanned	Yes
	table-header		Yes
	table-body		Yes
	table-row	height
	table-cell	number-rows-spanned	Yes
		display-align
		relative-align
8	region-before	clip		More complex pages
		extent
		overflow
		precedence
		reference-orientation
		region-name	Yes
	region-after
	region-start
	region-end
9	page-sequence	initial-page-number		Extended formatting required for realistic documents
	static-content
	page-number
	page-number-citation	ref-id
	marker	marker-class-name
	retrieve-marker	retrieve-boundary
		retrieve-class-name
		retrieve-position
10	footnote			Footnotes
10	footnote-body			Footnotes
11	region-body	column-count		Multi-column regions
11	region-body	column-gap		Multi-column regions
12	leader	leader-length		Leader
		leader-pattern
		rule-style
		rule-thickness
13	external-graphic	content-type		External graphic
13	external-graphic	src		External graphic
14	block	country		Hyphenation and improved line breaking
		hyphenate
		hyphenation-character
		hyphenation-keep
		hyphenation-ladder-count
		hyphenation-push-character-count
		hyphenation-remain-character-count
		language
		script
		xml:lang
	character	suppress-at-line-break
15	basic-link	destination-placement-offset		Not-all-that-basic basic linking
		external-destination
		indicate-destination
		internal-destination
		show-destination
		target-presentation-context
		target-processing-context
		target-stylesheet
16	block	visibility		Z-index and visibility
16	block	z-index		Z-index and visibility
17	page-sequence	force-page-count		More complex page sequences
	page-sequence-master
	repeatable-page-master-reference
	simple-page-master-reference
18	repeatable-page-master-reference	maximum-repeats		Extended page sequence control
	repeatable-page-master-alternatives
	conditional-page-master-reference	blank-or-not-blank
		odd-or-even
		page-position
19	float	clear		Floats
19	float	float		Floats
20	block	last-line-end-indent		Further white space, line height, and line end control
		linefeed-treatment
		line-height-shift-adjustment
		white-space-treatment
		text-align-last
		white-space-collapse
21	block-container	absolute-position		Block container and absolute positioning
		bottom
		left
		right
		span
		top
22	inline-container			Inline container
23	initial-property-set			Set initial properties
24	list-item-label			Fancy list item labels
25	table-caption			Fancy table captions
25	table-and-caption	caption-side		Fancy table captions
26	instream-foreign-object			Foreign objects
27	title			Document title
28	color-profile	color-profile-name		Colour profiles
28	color-profile	rendering-intent		Colour profiles
29	block	background-attachment		Extended background properties
		background-image
		background-position
		background-position-horizontal
		background-position-vertical
		background-repeat
30	table	table-omit-header-at-break		Control of table header repetition
31	table	border-collapse		Extended table properties
		border-separation
		border-spacing
32	table-cell	empty-cells		Extended table cell properties
		ends-row
		starts-row
33	table	table-layout		Choice of table layout algorithms
34	table-footer			Table footers
34	table	table-omit-footer-at-break		Table footers
35	block	letter-spacing		Text decoration and other extended properties
		score-spaces
		text-altitude
		text-decoration
		text-depth
		text-shadow
		text-transform
		word-spacing
	character	treat-as-word-space
36	block	font		Font shorthands and additional font properties
		font-selection-strategy
		font-size-adjust
37	leader	leader-alignment		Additional leader properties
37	leader	leader-pattern-width		Additional leader properties
38	character	glyph-orientation-horizontal		Glyph orientation
38	character	glyph-orientation-vertical		Glyph orientation
39	external-graphic	content-height		Additional external graphic properties
		content-width
		scaling
		scaling-method
40	root	media-usage		Media usage
41	block	background		Complete properties
		border	Yes
		border-bottom	Yes
		border-color	Yes
		border-left	Yes
		border-right	Yes
		border-style	Yes
		border-top	Yes
		border-width	Yes
		margin
		max-height
		max-width
		min-height
		min-width
		padding	Yes
		page-break-after
		page-break-before
		page-break-inside
		position
		size
		vertical-align
		white-space
42	multi-switch	auto-restore		Interactive media formatting objects
	multi-case	starting-state
		case-name
		case-title
	multi-toggle	switch-to
	multi-properties
	multi-property-set	active-state

Unimplemented Aural Properties

xmlroff implements visual presentation, not aural presentation, so the aural properties are unimplemented by xmlroff.

azimuth
cue (C)
cue-after
cue-before
elevation
pause (C)
pause-after
pause-before
pitch
pitch-range
play-during
richness
speak
speak-header
speak-numeral
speak-punctuation
speech-rate
stress
voice-family
volume

$Date: 2006/08/10 09:08:59 $	Home
Copyright © 2006 Sun Microsystems.