Re: XML is coming

[Charles McCathieNevile <charles w3 org>]

Hmmm. I had a think. It seems that the pieces needed are:

1. an xml parser this is like an html parser, but it has a simple rule for
when an element ends instead of having to apply the much less strict HTML
algorithm. It needs to nderstand a coule of special things - how to read a
"processing instruction", which is where it can find a Document Type
Declaration, and where it can find a stylesheet.

2. A CSS rendering engine. 

As I understand it, the parser can pass al rsponsibility for rendering
elements to the rendering engine - it merely has to identify the content of
each element.

(This would be a non-validating user agent - it would not test for validity,
and I believe it is a valid or required response that any document which is
not "well-formed" be automatically rejected.)

It might be possible that w3 can be made to do this, and to apply audio style
sheets to allow emacspeak to render it. I know nothing about the details of
how the two interact, and whether they are sufficiently seperated to make
this possible. I hope Raman can answer the question with respect to
emacspeak, and I will talk to Daniel Laliberte tomorrow, since I believe he
is reasonably familiar with e-lisp and w3.

Never know, there might be some good news just around the corner...

Charles McCN


On Fri, 27 Aug 1999, Jason White wrote:

  Unfortunately, there exists no software today that can be run in the Linux
  environment (or any other environment so far as I am aware) that can
  process XML, XHTML, MathML and other emerging file formats, to produce
  high-quality audio or braille output. The linux-braille project is
  attempting to address the braille side of this issue, albeit slowly due to
  lack of resources; but there is a real need for flexible, extensible, free
  (open-source) software, perhaps operating as an adjunct to existing XML
  tools or a web browser, that can realise the potential of the recently
  established markup and style languages. As we have discussed before, the
  main difficulty is lack of qualified and experienced developers who have
  significant spare time available to undertake such projects, or whose work
  can be funded adequately.
  
  
  ---
  Send your message for blinux-list to blinux-list redhat com
  Blinux software archive at ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux
  Blinux web page at http://leb.net/blinux
  To unsubscribe send mail to blinux-list-request redhat com
  with subject line: unsubscribe
  

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles w3 org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA