Re: [docbook-apps] Re: SGML to XML: Should I switch? How to switch?

[Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>]

On Wednesday 10 August 2005 15.37, Bob McIlvride wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> That sounds like an excellent option, worth looking into.
> Unfortunately, we are also using openjade to create HTML output for an
> arcane browser used by the QNX operating system, so I'll have to figure
> out how to replicate that with XSL as well.  Short term solution: it
> ain't broke, don't fix it.  Long term solution: use XSL.  Thanks for
> your suggestion.
>
> Cheerio!
>
> Bob
>
> Michael Wiedmann wrote:
> > Bob McIlvride <Bob.McIlvride@cogent.ca> writes:
> >>                                                     We still find
> >>DSSSL the best way to get PDF output using completely open-source
> >>tools.
> >
> > Another possible way is to use DB2LaTeX (http://db2latex.sf.net), a set
> > of XSLT stylesheets which generate LaTeX2e from your DocBook document.
> > From the resulting TeX-files you can generate high quality PDF/PS output
> > using a "standard" TeX system.
> >
> > Caveats:
> > - some (La)TeX knowledge is extremly useful
> > - don't underestimate needed time for customization
> > - upstream support seems to be not responding since some months
> >
> > Pros:
> > - good support on Debian
> > - KDE people recently showed interest to use DB2LaTeX (which would
> >   mean even better support in the near future)

Due to the lack of response from the maintainers of db2latex, we in fact have 
taken up dblatex instead: 
http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/

There is quite some activity going on, the maintainer is responsive, and there 
are several other people contributing as well as KDE (so, you don't need to 
worry about us locking it into a KDE dependency or anything like that.)   
We've settled on this as our pdf publishing solution, we just have to build 
it into our build system.  

We have some unique issues, including that we have to use a solution that can 
be distributed to every user if necessary.  That solution then needs to work 
on almost any distribution/version of support tools/operating system KDE 
supports, and we have several hundred documents to be processed, so speed is 
an issue.  

For us dblatex is practically a drop in at this point, with no build 
requirements (only runtime), it's small and self contained, basically being 
some XSLT with some perl glue, it's fairly fast, and quite customizable, 
although even the default output is quite attractive.  I actually expect 
we'll be providing it (at least optionally) with every KDE installation by 
our 3.5 release, due in the autumn. 

I really can't recommend it highly enough, it's solved nearly all the problems 
that were preventing us doing large scale pdf generation in a distributed 
manner (and have been since we switched from sgml some years ago now.)

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts
KDE Documentation: http://docs.kde.org
KDE on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.kde.org

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