Re: [docbook-apps] GSoC Project Idea: integrated LaTeX output support for the stylesheets

["Tony Graham" <tgraham@mentea.net>]

On Fri, April 5, 2013 2:09 pm, Gábor Kövesdán wrote:
> I plan to apply to this year's Summer of Code and I wanted to share my
> idea with you for discussion. I've been using DocBook both for personal
> documents (CV, Bachelor and Master Thesis, papers, etc.) and in the
> FreeBSD Project. I'm usually satisfied with the output that Apache FOP
> creates but I believe the PDF generation should be better supported. The
> only usable open source XSL FO renderer is Apache FOP (xmlroff is very
> immature and is not actively developed) so we have no alternatives.

Ouch.

> Besides, I had problems with it with large documents (it crashes). As a
> result, in FreeBSD, we are still using DocBook 4.2/4.5 with DSSSL
> stylesheets to render PDF since we are not satisfied with this
> situation. The lack of alternatives could mean technology/vendor
> lock-in, it does not work with some of our big documents and Java is a
> heavy dependency. I've worked with XSL FO and quite like how it works
> but when it comes to these factors I feel afraid of basing a serious
> project on XSL FO and FOP. Because of the complexity of XSL FO, it is
> not easy to write a renderer so this situation will probably not change
> in the near future. In turn, there's been LaTeX for a long time and
> people use it, they are familiar with and it is very well supported.
> Probably noone would think it is a risk basing a documentation project
> on LaTeX.But DocBook is more semantic and I like it much more. Also, the
> XHTML and EPUB generation of DocBook is of a really high quality. So I'd
> like to combine the advantages of DocBook and LaTeX and create
> stylesheets that produce LaTeX output that can be used for printable
> formats. I think that probably more people thinks like me and having
> this functionality would improve DocBook's acceptance in the industry.

Have you looked at speedata Publisher
(http://speedata.github.com/publisher/), which is open source, works with
XML, and has LuaTeX underneath?  (I haven't used it myself.)

Regards,


Tony Graham                                   tgraham@mentea.net
Consultant                                 http://www.mentea.net
Mentea       13 Kelly's Bay Beach, Skerries, Co. Dublin, Ireland
 --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --
    XML, XSL-FO and XSLT consulting, training and programming