xmlroff's "story"?

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.



-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files
for problems?  Stop!  Download the new AJAX search engine that makes
searching your log files as easy as surfing the  web.  DOWNLOAD SPLUNK!
http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=103432&bid=230486&dat=121642