RE: [docbook-apps] Need recommendations for the best modern Linux backend tools for DocBook

["Mauritz Jeanson" <mj@johanneberg.com>]

|  -----Original Message-----
|  From: Alan W. Irwin 
|
|  > I think you should look into XSL. And you already know about
|  > http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/index.html, judging by 
|  the link on
|  > http://plplot.sourceforge.net/documentation.php, so there 
|  is no need for me
|  > to expand on the subject :-).
|  
|  Our reference was to the DocBook definitive guide. 


Yes, sorry, I was too hasty.

 
|  A quick skim seems to indicate the above reference only 
|  deals with the
|  html and pdf case.  What about dvi and PostScript? Do we have to
|  give those up if we switch to XSL?


Not necessarily, but I suspect that you will need more than one formatting
tool. 

dblatex can produce DVI: http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/.

FOP has a PostScript renderer, but I have never tried it:
http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/1.0/output.html#ps


|  
|  Also, the above reference (published in 2007) mentions three
|  open-source possibilities for the XSL-FO processor (FOP, PassiveTeX,
|  and xmlroff) and seemed to lean toward FOP in terms of the example he
|  used later.  Is FOP the open-source XSL-FO processor you would
|  recommend now?
  

Yes. PassiveTeX is defunct, and xmlroff development seems to progress very
slowly.

Among commercial FO processors, I can recommend XEP:
http://www.renderx.com/tools/xep.html.
Another commercial vendor is Antenna House: http://www.antennahouse.com/.

Mauritz