RE: [docbook-apps] DocBook -> PDF paths that aren't hugely expensive?

[Jason Zech <zech@loyolapress.com>]

You can use the "content" property in CSS to replace text, and they have some prefixed CSS selectors/properties to convert an anchor link into a page reference. You'd have to look at their documentation as to how to handle it. 

This article gives a nice overview of some of the book-specific capabilities they have: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/boom/


-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Lee Powell [mailto:rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org] 
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 1:39 PM
To: Jason Zech
Cc: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] DocBook -> PDF paths that aren't hugely expensive?

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 01:57:18PM +0000, Jason Zech wrote:
> Hi Robin, 
> 
> I've had a lot of success with PrinceXML
> (http://www.princexml.com/) as a DocBook to PDF solution. Like
> Antenna House (which I haven't used), it allows you to control
> appearance via fairly robust CSS stylesheets. It's not free (about
> $500 for a single-user license last time I looked), but it's
> incredibly flexible for layout and design.
> 
> Also note that while it can produce your PDF directly from the
> DocBook XML source, I find it much better to transform your
> DocBook to HTML (using the open source stylesheets) then process
> the HTML through Prince. This allows you to take advantage of some
> of DocBook's more powerful features- auto-TOCs, labeling, indices,
> etc.  

That's an interesting option.  In a way, I'd rather go via (X)HTML
so that the visual layout is consistent.  The problem I've had with
every such mothed I've tried is that internal cross references show
up as "see section 2.1 wibble" instead of "see page 23".  For a
printed book, I strongly prefer the later, or at least that the page
number be included.  Does Prince handle that?

-Robin