pdf toolchain notes & suggestions

[Karsten Wade]

On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 09:58, Dave Pawson wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 15:14, Mark Johnson wrote:

> > 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?

I like that.  Either as part of the editorial process, or as a
pre-processing step in the Makefile.
  
> > 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.

AH is the tool from Antenna House?  Looking over their site, I don't see
a free version.  FOP is entirely free, so the is the only possible
choice for Fedora.  Unless I missed something about XEP or AH.
 
> > > 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?

FOP needs to compile with a free Java compiler and run in a free Java
environment to be part of a completely free toolchain.  Personally, I'd
prefer it to be compiled with gcj.

One reason for using gcj for compiling is that if we need to report bugs
with other free software, our components are going to be suspect if they
have been tainted by non-free components during compiling or runtime. 
There are developers who will push bug reports back at us in those
situations, and I support them in doing so. 

As hard as it may be to start, having a completely free toolchain will
be blessing.

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