pdf toolchain notes & suggestions

[Dave Pawson]

On Thu, 2004-09-23 at 20:12, Mark Johnson wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I believe the broken part of the FDP XML -> PDF toolchain is due to 
> the passivetex component of the TeX backend.

Its been pretty much unused for a long time now Mark.

> > XSLFO using xmltex) ever being able to work 100%
> 
> Hence I think it's time to consider a different toolchain for pdf 
> output.

+1

> 
> Two possibilities come to mind: FOP [1] and dblatex [2]. IMO fop 
> would be the better choice as customizing the output requires XSL 
> expertise, whereas dblatex requires LaTeX expertise to customize the 
> output.

+1 to fop.
  I'd guess that the majority of customisation could be done via
the xslt. If not I have some familiarity with xsl-fo.
 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/xslfo/index.html

> 
> 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.
> 
> I hope this info helps us get to work on building a new XML -> PDF 
> toolchain:)


Is there any substantial objection to using Sun java as part of 
a toolchain?



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