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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: Generating PDF
Nathan, > Seeing as how it sounds like your having problems, I thought I would jot > down my proccess and hopefully it will help you a bit. It's not directly > into pdf, as it's converted to tex first, but works well enough for me. Many thanks for your description, and it's relatively close to what I currently do. (http://www.e-smith.org/docs/docprocess.html ) I apologize if I wasn't as clear in my response to Greg before. He and I know each other (through the Linux Documentation Project) and he knows more about what I'm trying to do. My response must have come across as a bit more of a "cry for help" than it really was. I actually have a system that works quite fine for generating PDF files (described in the link above). The systems I have generate PDF, (chunked and non-chunked) HTML and text files and are all automated via Makefiles. Everything works fine. All my XML files work with SGML processing with a simple switch of the header, so I *can* get PDF files whenever I need to. What I am interested in is moving away from the SGML/DSSSL tools (like (open)jade) and into the XML/XSLT tools (like xsltprox, Xalan, Saxon, FOP and PassiveTeX). Why? Just because I want more control over formatting and I have just not ever felt comfortable with DSSSL. On the other hand, I do understand XSLT better and have now written some basic stylesheets and built multiple XSLT customization layers on top of Norm's XSL stylesheets. So I want to go that route. Thanks to 'xsltproc' from libxslt (http://www.xmlsoft.org/XSLT/ ), I'm all set with converting DocBook XML into (chunked or non-chunked) HTML files. That's all working great and I am extremely pleased with the quality of the output, the processing speed (fast!) and my ability to customize the output (via my own XSLT customization layer). Prior to using xsltproc, when I had a working Java environment, I was using Xalan and Saxon and they, too, worked fine for generating HTML from XML. What I want to do next is work on going *directly* from DocBook XML to PDF. For non-commercial options, there is FOP and PassiveTeX. Unfortunately, I was doing something on my system one day and wound up no longer having a working Java environment, so FOP is out until I can find the time to figure out what is wrong. I just downloaded PassiveTeX, and, likewise, haven't had the time to figure out the installation. Both of these are things that I just have to make the time to do... and I'm not sure when I will be able to do so. So that's where I am at... unfortunately, there's nothing anyone can really do to help me! It's just something I've got to do. > BTW, congrats on the Mitel thing, hope everything works out well for > you guys there. Many thanks! We are extremely excited about it and looking forward to the new opportunities and possibilities. (For those who don't know, we (e-smith) were recently acquired by Mitel Networks. See http://www.e-smith.org/article.php3?sid=48&mode=&order=0 for more info.) Regards, Dan -- Dan York, Director of Training dyork@e-smith.com Ph: +1-613-751-4401 Mobile: +1-613-263-4312 Fax: +1-613-564-7739 e-smith, inc. 150 Metcalfe St., Suite 1500, Ottawa,ON K2P 1P1 Canada http://www.e-smith.com/ open source, open mind
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