Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: About FO (was db2latex)

[Jeffrey Franks <jfranks@quik.com>]

Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> 
> Jeffrey Franks writes:
>  > > summary: immature marketplace.
>  >
>  > I'm a newbie trying to get a lay of the landscape too.
>  >
>  > Is Sgml/Dsssl a better approach to produce PDF with less pain?
> 
> not really, because there you have have just one processor to
> choose from, with an inadequate implementation
> 
> sebastian

XML/XSL and SGML/DSSSL landscape looks pretty bleak for FO and PDF
from a newbie's viewpoint. I thought this stuff was ready to use
without pain.

What would you recommend as a course of action on the project I'm
working on? I'm about 1/3 into a 1000 page book. I'm responsible
for *BOTH* content and style, and so processing issues are of
interest to me. I concentrate on one or the other, but in the
end, the buck stops at my doorstep.

I've rendered in HTML without customization just to close the
loop on my markup (and give me confidence process is doing
something right). Do I need to do the same with PDF (just
to make sure that the process works)?

Do you ever find you need to "tweak" the original XML markup
to get an acceptable PDF result? Hopefully, answer is "no" since
"yes" violates separation between content and style even if style
is stretched to mean processing environment.

-- 
Jeffrey L. Franks  (Web)  http://www.motiftools.org
                   (Mail) jfranks@quik.com