[publican-list] Possible alternative to FOP!

[Jeff Fearn]

On 08/12/2011 11:58 AM, Mike Hideo wrote:
>
> how does it process complex-text-languages and indic
> (really-complex-text-languages) ?
>
> On 08/12/2011 11:11 AM, Jeff Fearn wrote:
>> Hi everybody, as you all no doubt know we have been searching for an
>> alternative to FOP for some time. FOP has proven very expensive to
>> support and package, and has basically been a thorn in our side for
>> ages :(
>>
>> Enter http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ a new approach to HTML->PDF
>> conversion. Now I've been rather negative about this approach since
>> quite frankly the output of existing tools is poor, but this tool takes
>> the output to a new level!
>>
>> I urge you to take a look at the test PDF [1] I generated for the
>> Publican Users' Guide before you write off this approach.
>>
>> After a few tweaks to the HTML-Single style-sheet the out put is on-par
>> with FOP. Clearly there are limitations to what this can do, but the
>> benefits of this over FOP are significant, and I think overall we'd get
>> a lot more return for our effort in fixing layout issues with this tool
>> than continuing smashing our faces against the impenetrable mountain of
>> pain of FOP.
>>
>> Initail thoughts wkhtmltopdf Vs FOP:
>>
>> Cons:
>>
>> Foot notes become end notes
>>
>>
>> Pros:
>>
>> Not Java
>> Layout matches HTML
>> Not Java
>> Layout synced with HTML
>> Not Java
>> Non Intel arches possible
>> Not Java
>> Fast
>> Not Java
>> Small memory footprint
>> Not Java
>> Maintainable
>> Not Java
>>
>> Discuss!
>>
>> Cheers, Jeff.
>>
>> 1: http://fedorapeople.org/~jfearn/PUG_test.pdf

Hi Mike, I chased down the source to the current public RHEL-6 hi-IN 
Installation Guide and built a PDF of it [2], caution, it's 10MB!

Cheers, Jeff.

2: 
http://fedorapeople.org/~jfearn/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-6-Installation_Guide-hi-IN-TEST.pdf