On Thu, 2004-09-23 at 16:30, Karsten Wade wrote: > On Thu, 2004-09-23 at 12:12, 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. > > Thanks for bringing this up. Obviously most of our target output is > HTML, but many readers rely upon PDF. It's been bugging me for a while > that we couldn't do this properly. > > [snip background on broken tools] > > > Hence I think it's time to consider a different toolchain for pdf > > output. > > Agreed. > > > 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. > > Obviously there are going to be many ways to approach this. One reason > I support the FOP choice is because of the momentum of development. > This is more of a personal gut-feeling than proper research. > > Mainly, I think our tool choices should tie into our technical > philosophy (open, works, XML) and provide us with a wide pool of > knowledgeable users (DocBook, XML, XSL, FOP). > Agreed. If we are going to choose a toolchain, let's try to stick to open source if possible and one that isn't going to be on the un-maintained list any time soon. Mark, thanks for bringing this up again. I hope we can find a reliable solution soon. Tammy > > 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. > > Can anyone step up to demonstrate a method to get FOP to compile and run > using gcj and gij? > > *wracks his brain thinking of developers he can bargain with ...* > > - Karsten > -- > Karsten Wade, RHCE, Tech Writer > a lemon is just a melon in disguise > http://people.redhat.com/kwade/ > gpg fingerprint: 2680 DBFD D968 3141 0115 5F1B D992 0E06 AD0E 0C41 >
