Re: [docbook-apps] Image manipulation via XSLT extensions

[Tony Graham <Tony.Graham@MenteithConsulting.com>]

On Fri, Aug 17 2007 18:36:28 +0100, cmshapiro@gmail.com wrote:
...
> However, the locations of the images (as given by the fileref
> attributes in the XML document) are not known until processing time.
> So, if I want to run another command on these images before XSLT time,
> I would need to first parse the XML document for the image locations
> with something like XMLStarlet (or even just grep and sed), run the
> commands, then finally run the XSLT processor.  That would work, but
> not as nicely as doing everything at XSLT processing time.

An XSLT transform to read XML and generate a batch file or shell script
is probably a common occurrence: I do it quite often.

You could also generate a subordinate Makefile with a target for each
PNG (and an 'all' target that depends on all of them) so images are
re-rasterised only when their SVG has changed (and the Makefile itself
regenerated only when the XML source has changed).

> Perhaps Ant might be a better build solution than make, however.  I
> will look into it.

Ant's xslt/style target does make it easy to run transforms (and really
pays off compared to shell scripts if you're trying to use Saxon with
XML catalogs) but I would hesitate to recommend changing from Make to
Ant just so Ant can run external programs, since both do that.

Regards,


Tony Graham.
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