RE: [docbook-apps] is docbook the right tool for the job?

["Wills, Robert" <Robert.Wills@worksuite.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Lewis [mailto:jason@dickson.st]
Sent: 03 September 2003 04:47
To: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [docbook-apps] is docbook the right tool for the job?

> I want to have a printed catalogue for my business, of all the products
> we sell. I have a database that has all the information in it and I was
> hoping to generate the catalogue from my database into a docbook format
> using perl, and then generate a PDF from it.

You could always write a program which reads your database and outputs
XSL:FO markup directly, and then feed the resulting file through FOP or
other rendering engine to produce PDF. Having been inspired by Dave Pawson's
XSL:FO book we wrote some Java to do this using the JDOM library to build an
in-memory XML tree and serialize to file. Works very well and you get full
access to those features of XSL:FO supported by your rendering engine. IMHO
DocBook is not so good for non-linear presentation such as you may want for
a product catalogue.

Thanks,
Rob