pdf toolchain notes & suggestions

[Dave Pawson]

On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 15:14, Mark Johnson wrote:

> 
> FWIW, we (we=some RH Docs folks) did some testing a few months ago 
> on a doc that had the typical level of complexity that approximated 
> our needs: variablelists, nested lists, and a number of tables. FOP 
> produced excellent output with no funky formatting. OTOH, the 
> passivetex output was quite messed up in a variety of ways (most of 
> which escape me at the moment). Hence my recommedation to try FOP.

The only real place that fop falls down is in the automatic layout
of tables, which is also passivetext weak spot.
 For sensible, non-nested stuff, its more than adquate.


> 

> I know this may sound crazy, but if we have to, we can use the 
> DSSSL/jade toolchain as a last-resort fallback. Of course, doing so 
> will put some restrictions on the content of the source files (e.g. 
> no Xincludes), but I don't see this as being a problem, as the 
> markup used in Fedora docs is not likely to be complex.

An XSLT script could be used to test for nasties which would trip
up a fop based toolchain. Perhaps as part of the editorial process?
  

> 
> DaveP: being the resident XSL-FO expert, what fo -> pdf (or even xml 
> -> pdf) tool(s) do you recommend?

XEP, AH, fop. There are a couple more, but despite its minimal
development, there are a couple of people hard at work on fop.
Its no mean feat.

> 
> > Can anyone step up to demonstrate a method to get FOP to compile and run
> > using gcj and gij?
> 
> Strictly speaking, we shouldn't need to recompile it under gcj, but 
> it's a nice, safe thing to do if we're going to use gij as the java 
> interpreter.

Is that pure NIH, or are there other reasons?
  Why make life hard?


-- 
Regards DaveP.
XSLT&Docbook  FAQ
http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl