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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: DocBook and JadeTex: Left and Right HeadersandFooters


Hi everyone,

On Thu, Mar 15, 2001 at 09:38:23AM +1000, Phillip Shelton wrote:
> A tool that does not use java.
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
>  
> > ... its hard to see what
> > DSSSL/Jade buys you (apart from processing SGML, of course)


Ha ha!  Nice one, Phillip.  I entirely agree with you.

I downloaded Apache FOP (+ Xalan + Xerces), and tried it with a
DocBook XML document (a short test document, about 10 pages long).

Kaffe (the free Java interpreter) looped endlessly on it -- this is a
known bug in Kaffe.  So, I was reduced to installing Sun's Java VM
(normally I don't tolerate non-free software on my system).

It worked, but I had to increase Java's stack size to THIRTY
MEGABYTES!  Thirty megabytes, to process a 10-page document.  And it
took about 2 minutes (that's on a PIII 450MHz).

And the tables were crap: this is a known issue in FOP.  FOP requires
that table column widths be set explicitly, but the flow object output
from Xalan + Norm's XSL stylesheets don't do that.  So, all the
columns of the table are rendered at the left-edge of the table.
That's right: all the table contents overlap each other, creating an
illegible mess.

There was also a minor problem with the table of contents: the page
numbers weren't aligned neatly (they were aligned in the wavy manner
you often see from amateur typesetters, who try to lay out everything
with the space bar).  Ugly, but not incorrect.

So, in response to Sebastian's original remark: indeed, DSSSL/Jade
doesn't buy you anything... as long as you don't mind installing a
bloated, non-free Java VM, and using flow-object processors which
won't render correctly.


Regards,
Dave


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