![]() ![]() (And PTC doesn’t even offer FOSI training any more, the last time I checked.) So, whatever advantages one usually expects for an open standard are noticeably absent from the FOSI world-in that sense it might as well be proprietary. FOSI specifically, while it may be theoretically an “open standard”, in reality there are only a couple of vendors that support it (and I’m not sure if DataLogics even still exists or supports FOSI publishing?), and there are few if any sources for documentation, training, etc on the standard apart from the vendors. ![]() Once a feature that was previously extension-only gets incorporated into the spec, vendors are usually quite good about using the new spec’s implementation and deprecating their old extensions for the same thing.Īlso, w.r.t. For one thing, it helps standards orgs see where the gaps are in their specs, so they can fix those issues in the next revision of the spec (hopefully). If you are an implementation vendor, and you know most of your customers need feature X which isn’t included in the standard, you’re going to have to add extensions. Standards are incomplete, and contain ambiguities, despite the best efforts of the committees drafting them. But we all know that never happens in real life. Ideally, the open standard would provide everything that anyone could ever need, and there would never be a need for extensions. On the other hand, FOSI has built-in featuresespeciallydesigned for technical documentation and service information. APP-only formatting capabilities are generally not used in technical documentation and service information. TeX H&J is by design better than APP H&J. Plus, the Styler Users Guide has a 17-page chapter about performance issues with Styler. AndAPP Styler source edits have the potential to decrease its formatting speed even more. PTC Arbortext acknowlegesthe TeX engine has the fastest formatting speed. ![]() Imperative JavaScripted APP is a poor fit for declarative Styler, which is a structured markup application very like FOSI. By comparison, the FOSI Reference Manual is less than half that long, with 437 pages. The Styler Users Guide has 1,094 pages, even though Styler formatting capabilities are limited. Styler has gotten to the point where it is more complicated than FOSI. Especially considering that an element with a source edit can no longer be modified with Styler. TheFOSI development environmentis vastly superior to using the Styler UI with possibly hundreds of property sets andthousands of lines of potentiallyconfliciting source edits in JavaScript. In-house FOSI development is perfectly feasible and is done all the time. APP development requires outside consulting DIY is out of the question. My FOSI tutorials have been available for years, and PTC Arbortext has FOSI training courses that could be offered again. APP training courses do not currently exist. FOSI requires only experience with paged output. FOSI documentation is both, and includes step-by-step instructions for developing a FOSI stylesheet from scratch as well as a development methodology and F1 Help for every formatting property. APP documentation is acknowledged to be neither complete nor up to date. SPR Fixesfor 6.1 Styler (through M040) list 42 bugfixes, 6 of which involved software crashes. FOSI/TeX has the reliability and stability that organizations require. In any case, at least 250 APP-related bugfixes were reported, with many involving unexpected termination of the software. It is not clear how much overlap exists between the two documents. On the other hand, approximately 135publishing bugfixes specifically related to APP are listed.In addition, the release notesfor APP 11.0 (through M070) list approximately 250 bugfixes. SPR Fixes for Arbortext Editor 6.1 (through M040) lists 10 bugfixes related to FOSI/TeX, none of them involving software crashes. By comparison, FOSI/TeX's successful track record of top speed, top quality, database-driven, "lights-out"batch publishing of SGML/XML documents in multiple languages is entering itsthird decade. Just a few years ago, APP was an interactive, template-based product that utilized processing instructions. ![]()
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