[fedora-java] about updating itext

[Andrew Overholt]

Hi,

On Sat, 2010-02-13 at 10:05 -0500, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
> 2- We used to ship itext with xml support. This part of the code was
> not in the itext-2.1.7 tree but we had ported this over from a 1.x
> release [1]. I am not familiar with this part of the code and I was
> told that this add-on was needed by maven. Is this still valid?

Yes, Maven Doxia 1.1.2 still requires this XML support which, as you
have noticed, is no longer in iText 5.x.  A related Doxia JIRA is:

  http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/DOXIA-53

> The issue is, itext-5.0.0+ dropped some other part of its code, which
> our xml patch was depending on. In particular, the rtf support of
> itext moved to a separate project [2]

... and I can't make itextrtf build against iText 5.0.x :(

> 1- Package the new project separately. And move the xml patch to this package.

A lot of changes will need to be made to make it build against iText
5.0.x.

> 2- Drop rtf bits from our xml patch (I don't know if this is possible.
> I didn't check. overholt?)

This may be a good option but even without the RTF stuff, it will
require patching to get the XML bits to compile.  For one thing, the
HTML stuff has changed; see:

  http://itextpdf.com/history.php?branch=history.50&node=500

"* Removal of SimpleCell, SimpleTable.
  * Removal of Table, Cell, Row, PdfTable, PdfCell."

Would you like me to continue investigating this situation, with an end
goal of being able to build Doxia 1.1.2 against iText 5.0.1?

> 3- Don't update itext. Stick with 2.1.7 for now.

This is easiest but until Doxia either moves to a newer iText (which I'm
not sure is even possible) or uses fop instead of iText, this will still
be a thorn in our side.

Another option is maintaining iText 2.x as "itext2" and moving the main
itext package to 5.x.  We can also go back to the Doxia people and ask
them about this situation.

Thanks for doing this work and for investigating possibilities, Orcan!

Andrew