DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: DOCBOOK: xsl support for fo

[Bob Stayton <bobs@caldera.com>]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 05:22:29PM -0500, Stefan Seefeld wrote:
> hi there,
> 
> I'm sorry if this fits more into the apps list, I'm not sure.

Yes, it does belong on docbook-apps, which is where I'm
replying.

> When I 
> tried apache's 'fop' tool to generate pdf from docbook (transformed with
> the fo stylesheets), I got almost unusable results.

Welcome to the club.  8^)
 
> What is the actual status of the fo stylesheets ? Is it written with 
> specific fo processors (and their limitations) in mind ? What fo tools 
> do exist, are used by people, especially Open Source ones ?

The DocBook fo stylesheets are in pretty good shape.
That is, they produce mostly valid XSL FO output.
There are still some bugs and missing pieces, and
bug reports are welcome.
But most of the problems are the fo processor backends,
which are not yet fully conformant to the spec.

Your open source choices are pretty much FOP and PassiveTex.
Neither produce perfect results yet, but I've found
PassiveTex produces more usable results for my purposes.

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
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                                            email: bobs@caldera.com