[xmlroff] xmlroff's "story"?

[Tony G. <Ton...@Su...>]

I started the "What needs to be done to make xmlroff a success?" thread with a
few words about the big picture for xmlroff, then the subsequent discussion
brought out a few more big picture ideas.

I would now like to revisit the big picture definition to incorporate current
ideas into a one- or two-sentence "story" for xmlroff that could be used in
the SourceForge project description and as the first thing on
http://xmlroff.org so people immediately know what we're doing and where we're
heading.

Once the story is right, we can use that as a guide for what to do next with
xmlroff.

I previously wrote:

> I would define the purpose of the xmlroff project as:
> 
>    To develop an open source, conformant, multilingual XSL formatter capable
>    of producing printable output from XML for most technical and business
>    documents.
> 
> The project's principles are:
> 
>  - xmlroff should be free.
> 
>  - There's room in this world for more than one open source XSL formatter.
> 
>  - There's room in this world for open-source, free but not open, and
>    commercial XSL formatters.
> 
> It's been a while since I've had this sort of conversation with myself, let
> alone with anybody else, and I surprised myself by not mentioning C or GNOME.
> 
> Given the above, a successful outcome for the project would be:
> 
>    A multilingual XSL formatter with conformantly implements the formatting
>    objects and properties necessary for formatting most technical and business
>    documents.

And the big picture ideas from more than just me included:

 - Implement hyphenation

 - Improve TrueType/OpenType support

 - Provide a Windows port

 - Provide a Debian port

 - Be the best DocBook formatter on the planet

 - Support more graphics formats

 - Integrate with editors

 - Provide a SWIG interface for use from scripting languages

(and if I omitted your favourite idea, feel free to comment.)

To boil that down to as few words as possible, it looks to me like people want
a high-quality, multi-platform formatter that excels at DocBook formatting and
that integrates easily with other programs and with scripting languages.

So how about that as the "story"?

   xmlroff is a high-quality, multi-platform XSL formatter that excels at
   DocBook formatting and that integrates easily with other programs and with
   scripting languages.

Regards,


Tony.