OASIS Mailing List ArchivesView the OASIS mailing list archive below
or browse/search using MarkMail.

 


Help: OASIS Mailing Lists Help | MarkMail Help

docbook message

[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]


Subject: DocBook tool chain recommendations?


I'm still trying to decide on an Open Source tool chain to use
for formatting DocBook into PDF.  I gather that the procedure
is to use an XSLT processor to process DocBook into XSL-FO,
then use an XSL-FO processor to generate the PDF.

Bob Stayton's "DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide" (Sagehill, 2003)
lists several possibilities for XSLT processors, including Saxon,
Xalan, and xsltproc.  I gather that xsltproc is a good choice, as
it is fast, free, and conformant to the specification.

This leaves me with the problem of formatting the XSL-FO into PDF.
Dave Pawson's "XSL-FO" book (O'Reilly, 2002) lists a number of
formatters.  http://webdesign.about.com/cs/xslformatters also
lists several possibilities.

PassiveTex is one possibility, but setting up an maintaining a TeX
suite just for this purpose may be onerous (though it would have
the advantage of providing access to TeX :-).

FOP is another possibility (and I've downloaded a copy to try out),
but it appears to be rather dated: the current version (0.20.5) was
created in 2003.

I'd rather not go down the wrong path, so I'm asking for comments,
cautions, and suggestions.  Help?

-r

P.S.  I'd look in the wiki (http://wiki.docbook.org) for all this,
       but it appears to be out of service:

         Cannot Load Address
         No such host wiki.docbook.org

       (I've sent a note to Norman Walsh, who owns the domain.)
-- 
email: rdm@cfcl.com; phone: +1 650-873-7841
http://www.cfcl.com        - Canta Forda Computer Laboratory
http://www.cfcl.com/Meta   - The FreeBSD Browser, Meta Project, etc.


[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]