🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JJC.91Jun27115235@jclark.UUCP> jjc@jclark.UUCP (James
Clark) writes:

   I just started reading ISO/IEC DIS 10179, Document Style Semantics and
   Specification Language, and I was surprised to find that it made no
   use of the SGML LINK feature.  

The CD (DP) version of DSSSL did make use of LINK to bind a DSSSL
specification to an SGML source document.  The DIS version specifies
in clause 2.2 "The binding of a DSSSL specification to an SGML source
document instance is outside the scope of this international
standard".
While I did not take part in that decision, I could imagine that
requiring support for a rather obscure% SGML feature such as LINK for
the sole purpose of binding a style to a document was considered to be
overkill (you could still use LINK for this purpose in the DIS version
if you wanted).

Now the next question is, "why doesn't DSSSL make use of LINK as a
representation of association specifications?" (there actually was
some pressure to use LINK as the basis for DSSSL in this way).
The answer is that (a) LINK is rarely implemented in today's SGML
products, and (b) LINK was not considered to be as powerful and easy to
use as the location model (then called "FQGI") idea that underlies
DSSSL.
Consequently, DSSSL implementers would have had to newly implement an
SGML feature that would not have been quite adequate to the problem
anyway. 

A question whose answer would interest me is: who or what did make you
aware of DSSSL, and how do you intend to use it?

Gruesse, Carsten
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
% obscure in the sense of "rarely implemented" and thus not readily
applicable to problems at hand.