pdf toolchain notes & suggestions

[Karsten Wade]

On Thu, 2004-09-23 at 12:12, Mark Johnson wrote:

> If we were to adopt FOP, it would be nice to get it working under 
> gcj (via gij), so that we stick to a 100% free toolchain, though I 
> think it will also run under kaffe [3]. Some testing would clearly 
> need to be done... And if such a toolchain proves sufficient for the 
> needs of the FDP, it probably wouldn't be too difficult to find 
> someone to package FOP.

Considering that we have the attention of Kaffe.org developer(s), I'd
definitely like to try parallel testing with (at least) kaffe and
gcj/gij.

You might think it is preferable to use what has been invented at Red
Hat, where the resources exist for gcj work.  It is not preferable.  We
all want things to be interoperable and open.  Knowing that we can swap
virtual machines means people get to make their own choice about free
notJavaVMs.

For the same reason, perhaps we can (at least) share testing data and
results with Debian people tackling the same issues.  It would _rock_ if
we could get FOP to do everything well in all free scenarios.

Perhaps an informal sub-committee?  Just people interested in the topic,
keep part of the conversation, and volunteer.

What's next?

Ideas:

* Get a new sub-project into CVS (fedora-docs/toolchain? or somesuch
name).  Tammy, Mark, and I can commit into this for now, acting as
conduits for changes from the rest of the project.

* We need 
  ** Someone from kaffe
  ** Someone from gcj
  ** A willing FOP expert (either one who knows the code and use, or a
coder and an expert user)
  ** A DocBook XML expert (or three)
  ** Volunteers willing to test parallel toolchains
  ** A Debian liaison
  ** ???

* ... ?

Just some ideas.  I really do mean, "What's next?"

- Karsten, who's volunteering for what he knows -- beta testing

-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, Tech Writer
a lemon is just a melon in disguise
http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
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