DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: DOCBOOK: How to process docbook-->pdf

[Bob Stayton <bobs@caldera.com>]

On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 12:03:08PM +0200, Gert Bultman (Xi) wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> several people have advised me to upgrade to newer stylesheets and a newer Fop. However, the more recent the versions, the more errors they produce. 
> 
> I've tried xsl 1.51.1, 1.52.2, 1.53.0 with both fop 0.20.2 and 0.20.4, but the only stable combination that works for me is 1.45 + fop 0.20.2. 
> I use W98 + cygwin and use java for all processing. 
> 
> Any tips, hint or suggestions?

There's no reason to upgrade if that combination meets
your needs.  But there have been improvements and
bug fixes in the later stylesheet versions that
might help with certain formatting chores or the handling
of certain elements.

The fact that the 1.53.0 and 0.20.4 combination produces a
lot of error messages doesn't mean it doesn't work.
The stylesheets are starting to use FO properties not
in all the FO processors, and FOP rightly mentions that
fact, often many times, as you noticed. The noisiest item
is the new use of tables in page headers and footers,
which gets you at least two errors per page.

But they also produce usable if not perfect output.  I've
learned to redirect the error messages to an error file.  I
only check it if I don't get output.  And if you think FOP
is bad, you should try PassiveTeX some time if you want to
see a lot of noise and still get useful output.  8^)

[BTW, I moved this thread to docbook-apps]

-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
Caldera International, Inc.                 fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bobs@caldera.com