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

["Tony Graham" <tgraham@mentea.net>]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 6:32 am, Nic Gibson wrote:
> On 10 May 2012, at 01:22, Carlos Araya wrote:
>
>> Robin:
>>
>> When I expressed my opinion of FO being as complete as it needed to be
>> perhaps I should have clarified a few things.
>>
>> Is Docbook a viable way to publish book-based content. Yes, it is
>>
>> Is it as complete as it need to be for me to consider it a full-fledged
>> book publishing tool. No, and here are the reasons why I think this is
>> the case.
>>
>> You cannot do absolute positioning of content on a page
>
> You are absolutely right about this but for large classes of books this is
> irrelevant. We've found that most b&w text can be done up and including
> academic monographs with tables and charts (although chart positioning is
> not perfect)

Are we talking about Docbook or FO here?  XSL 1.0 has absolutely
positioned block containers, and XSL 1.1 added the ability to flow content
into multiple regions on the page.

>> Typography is weak (at least with the open source tools available)
>
> FOP has poor typography and FO itself isn't really up to the standard of a
> page layout tool but for many purposes it's good enough. Once you start
> talking real money (such as the Antenna House tools) the situation gets a
> lot better.

The absence of properties for kerning, etc., ties in with XSL-FO not
specifying the line layout algorithm, which I would attribute partly to
XSL 1.0 being meant to be used with multiple formatters, including being
retrofitted onto pre-existing formatting engines (as it was), and partly
to a philosophy that formatters should be able to implement the spec and
still compete on features, so if you want better-looking paragraphs, you'd
find the formatter that could do it.

Developing software requires time and/or money (to fund the time).  Open
source software depends on people having the itch to solve that particular
problem, not having more important claims on the time it would take to do
it, and putting in the time to write the software.  Commercial software
companies use money to motivate the itch and the spending of time by their
developers, and they use your money when they sell you the result as their
motivation.  To dismiss the open source implementations for not delivering
better typography while being prepared to pay real money for commercial
software ignores the possibility of pay real money to improve the open
source implementations.  If there was, say, a kickstarter.com project to
improve the typography of FOP (which I am *not* setting myself up to do),
would anyone here even make a pledge? (I'll get off my soapbox now.)

> It definitely isn't a technology for spread based layouts thought.

There is a fo:spread-page-master in a previous "Design Notes" [1] but that
has yet to be merged into the full Working Draft document.

> We've done proofs of concept on FO based publishing with two large UK
> publishers and are looking at a third. The second client is looking at how
> to use the tools in a production environment at the moment.
>
> The biggest problem is the lack of support for signatures and that is in

Antenna House has extended its allowed values of the "force-page-count"
property [2] so, e.g., a page sequence can be padded with blank pages to
force a defined page count.

More to the point, with XSL-FO, it's never been clear whether things like
signatures are part of its remit or something for a job control language
to handle.  For example, XSl-FO has only ever had a hazy notion of where
the binding edge lies.  But if you want to discuss things like that
further, the best place at present would be the W3C Print and Page Layout
Community Group [3], which anyone can join for free (and I happen to be
the current Chair).

> the 2.0 wishlist. One of the big issues we've seen with our clients is
> that publishers see the W3C as irrelevant to them. This means that
> publishing industry representation on the FO committee is poor.

More input from the publishing industry, even on the Community Group,
would be welcome.

Regards,


Tony Graham                                   tgraham@mentea.net
Consultant                                 http://www.mentea.net
Mentea       13 Kelly's Bay Beach, Skerries, Co. Dublin, Ireland
 --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --
    XML, XSL-FO and XSLT consulting, training and programming

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-xslfo20-20101216/#sec2_2_17
[2] http://www.antennahouse.com/xslfo/extension.htm#force-page-count
[3] http://www.w3.org/community/ppl/