In an opening key note speech at XML Europe 2000, Kenneth Brooks, Vice President of Digital Content at Barnes and Noble listed the issues which remain unresolved in their XML-based publishing framework.

The framework has evolved to use conventional scanning and OCR techniques to produce a intermediary XML format from books already in print. This intermediary format is then transformed into HTML and other formats suitable for use by e-book readers.

XSL featured prominently in the issues list. Brooks commented that the capability of XSL to perform end-to-end production of print quality pages is still unproven. Best effort transformations followed by hand-tuning of the output still hasn't been ruled out as a final option. At present to support paged-based output, PDF versions of the documents are still maintained.

A second major issue mentioned was the management of multiple XSL stylesheets. Alongside structural transforms to re-purpose content for the required end format, styling transforms are made to produce the final presentation. This final step may require stylesheets specific to a given publisher, and potentially even per book to yield faithful reproductions.

How many of these problems will be solved by finalisation of the XSL-FO specification is unclear. Its certain however that the e-publishing industry will be looking for early tool support for the specification. Brooks invited the XML community, particularly tools vendors and developers, to help participate.