RE: [docbook-apps] Fop, Landscape Chapters, & psmi

[Janeene Webb <webdesign@dawnmist.net>]

> One thing I'd like to clarify (since the xsl:message I put in the 
> customization I posted at 
> <http://www.thingbag.net/docbook/tabletest/docbook-psmi.xsl> is 
> nonsensical), the customization I posted landscapes any direct child of a 
> chapter, appendix, or article that has the <?landscape?> pi or orient="land" 
> (for tables). So you could put your table directly in an appendix, and then 
> use orient="land" to landscape the table. The table would begin a new page, 
> of course, but you would not need to create any sections in the appendix. 
> Still, it wasn't a general enough solution, so I gave up on it.

*nods* But unfortunately FOP hasn't implemented things terribly well, and 
tables with orient="land" die if they are more than one page long. FOP also 
hasn't implemented the reference-orientation attribute either.

> It isn't too hard to customize the docbook xsls for use with psmi to make a 
> landscaped chapter or appendix. The following stylesheet should prepare any 
> chapter or appendix where role="land" to be landscaped by the psmi xsls. It 
> overrides two templates from component.xsl (see <!-- psmi stuff -->) and 
> adds a new pagemaster and page-sequence-master. 
>
> Hope that helps,
> David

Thanks David, it helped heaps. I needed to customise it a bit further - in 
part due to FOP's limitations (like not being able to use 
reference-orientation="90deg"), and in part because the new page masters were 
not putting in the id block onto the generated content and so links to the 
chapter/appendix no longer got attached. Have now got it working nicely, and 
have attached the modified customisation so that anyone else running into 
similar problems with FOP has a working starting point.

Curiously I found that if I tried to use the customisation with the 
role="land" attribute, FOP crashes with a complaint about page-sequence not 
being allowed as a child of fo:flow. In the modifications, I've made it 
possible to put the processing instruction <?landscape?> in the beginning of 
the chapter/appendix (I've been putting it between the <chapter> and <title> 
elements) and it will turn the full chapter around.

Cheers,
Janeene.