Re: [docbook-apps] So, no books? (was Re: [docbook-apps] Re: Future of XSL-FO)

[Richard Hamilton <hamilton@xmlpress.net>]

Robin,

On May 9, 2012, at 12:28 PM, Robin Lee Powell wrote:

> On Wed, May 09, 2012 at 11:34:25AM -0700, Carlos Araya wrote:
>> The people at lxml-dev will only get half the conversation but
>> here it goes.
>> 
>> XSL-FO is as complete as it needs to be, for the domain it is used
>> in. People who have been in the standard bodies can confirm or
>> deny this but I believe that FO was not meant for book publishing
>> but to be used in conjunction with XSL to produce short articles
>> and reports.
> 
> Wow, that's ... quite something.
> 
> So, basically, there's no sane, supported toolchain for producing
> books from doc*book*?
> 
That is incorrect.

There most definitely is a sane, supported toolchain for producing books from DocBook.
Nearly our entire catalog at XML Press is produced from DocBook Version 5 using the open source DocBook stylesheets.

The standard stylesheets will generate a respectable book with TOC, index, front matter, back matter, chapters, appendices, prefaces, colophons, etc.

We have customizations, but they are for presentation details (fonts, page size, etc.), not for the basic functionality needed to create a book.

I can't say whether FO was "intended" for book publishing, but in our experience it is adequate for our needs, and with a few extensions provided by RenderX (and also by Antenna House), it is fully up to the job.

Best Regards,
Richard Hamilton 
-------
XML Press
XML for Technical Communicators
http://xmlpress.net
hamilton@xmlpress.net