Re: [docbook] status of graph2svg

[Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz>]

[Moving thread to docbook-apps where it should be...]

On 12.11.2011 16:33, Paul Tremblay wrote:

> processor, and the only xsl 2 processor is Saxon.

There are several XSLT 2.0 processors on the market, but most of them
are commercial. But as Saxon runs on Java and .NET you and it is
open-source can use it in almost any environment these days.

> However, if you use
> the latest version of Saxon,
> saxon9he.jar, the stylesheets crash because this processor does not
> accept built in functions. Instead, one has to download the older
> version to get the stylesheets to work.

Or you can pay few sterlings and get commercial version of Saxon with
EXSLT extensions enabled.

Or you can import FXSL implementation of Math library.

> But the documentation for the stylesheets is very sparse. The original
> is in Russian, a language I don't read. 

It's not Russian, Russian uses Cyrillic, believe me. :-)

> I can't figure out simple things
> like how to put labels on my x and y axis. 

Apart information from Dave there is some basic info from author of
stylesheet, my student -- http://graph2svg.jinak.cz/about_en.html

> For that reason, I have started writing my own stylesheet. However, I
> thought that maybe I should try to get something very complete to work
> before I spent a lot of time.

If your requirements are almost satisfied by Graph2SVG, why you are
writing your own code from scratch instead contributing patches into
Graph2SVG? It's open-source.

> I think the graph2svg is an excellent idea, but I wonder if it has any
> future.

It was student project and as is with many student projects original
author can't for many reason devote enough time for further maintenance.
But Jakub already taken patches from Dave, so it is not dead project.
Future of course depends on users of library -- if they will use and
willing to improve it, they can do it even if the original author
doesn't want or can do this. License allows it.

> Having a standard graphing language, and thereby tools to
> generate graphs, would certainly be very helpful.

Yes, but developing standards is fast and rewarding thing to do. But
again you are free to drive such effort :-)

				Jirka


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jirka Kosek      e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz      http://xmlguru.cz
------------------------------------------------------------------
       Professional XML consulting and training services
  DocBook customization, custom XSLT/XSL-FO document processing
------------------------------------------------------------------
 OASIS DocBook TC member, W3C Invited Expert, ISO JTC1/SC34 member
------------------------------------------------------------------

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature