Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XSL print StyleSheets

[Alex Lancaster <alex@santafe.edu>]

>>>>> "MH" == Matthew Harrison <harry@inpharmatica.co.uk> writes:

[...]

MH> Here are my problems to report:

MH> 1. The coverage on getting started with XML is rather thin, but as
MH> I'm new to either XML or SGML, I've opted for the XML route, for
MH> my own reasons. With improved XML coverage in the docs, we could
MH> get up to speed quicker, and be quicker with the feedback.

The XML/SGML translation, for most cases, is pretty trivial IMHO.  The
bigger hurdle is whether or not to use XSL or DSSSL, since the DSSSL
support is more mature than XSL.  (You can use the DSSSL tooks for
XML, btw, in other words using XML does not necessarily imply you have
to use the XSL stylesheets).

MH> 2. The DSSSL print and html stylesheets (1.54) don't seem to
MH> handle articleinfo (ok, so we're a little bit bleeding edge and
MH> decided to go straight for v4 :?) which is why we decided to try
MH> the XML, as the XSL html stylesheets handled articleinfo, and we
MH> could produce html with them..

Yes, I agree.  It's counterintuitive for DSSSL-ites that `print'
stylesheets are in `fo', but that's just how XSL handles `print'
backends.  If you are about to plunge into using XSL, you really
should find out a bit of background on them before using them.  This
background material, in turn, should clue you into the `fo' issue (I
found out about them from Norm's excellent tutorial:

 http://nwalsh.com/docs/tutorials/xsl/index.html)

For the record, Norm does mark them as `experimental', which I read
as: I've probably got to a fair bit of legwork and background reading
to learn how to configure my environment, before getting them to work.

MH> 3. But I'm still not in print by this route. 'fo' stylesheets
MH> produce fo (I'm learning as I go here :?), not tex like the DSSSL
MH> print stylesheets and don't quite get me printing. I'm sure I've
MH> missed something.  How do I get from fo to tex? (or to print by
MH> any route, apart from printing html from a browser or using
MH> html2ps)?

PassiveTeX:

 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~rahtz/passivetex/

Takes the `output.fo' objects from your XSL run and transforms them
into PDF.  

Expect also to have to do quite a bit of legwork and configuration for
this as well.  Packaging and system integration for XSL tools is not
as advanced as the DSSSL stylesheets and Jade/JadeTeX (which are now
distributed as part of standard Red Hat 6.2) at this stage, largely, I
expect, because they're so new.
-- 
Alex Lancaster * alex@santafe.edu * www.santafe.edu/~alex * 505 984-8800 x242
Santa Fe Institute (www.santafe.edu) & Swarm Development Group (www.swarm.org)