Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019

[Dave Pawson <dave.pawson@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2021 at 23:05, Kevin Dunn <kdunn@hsc.edu> wrote:
>
> I spent the day playing with the demo versions of XEP and Antenna House Formatter. I got both of them up and running using xsltproc and the default xsl stylesheet, with the SelfDocBook as a source xml file. Pdf from both looks good.
>
> Following DocBook XSL TCG, I was able to add a new font and enable ligatures by editing xep.xml. So XEP seems like I could make it work.
>
> Antenna House Formatter was not too bad to install, but the documentation is huge, and I have yet to figure out how to add a font or enable ligatures. I found the font-config.xml file and added a font to it, but I can't figure out how to tell the formatter to use that font.

That's where you need to read up on xsl-fo. Called up from xsl-fo, AH
then uses font-config to locate the file.

There also seems to be extensions required to enable ligatures, but I
haven't figured out how to use them, either on the command line or in
a configuration file. Is the AH Formatter much more complicated to use
than XEP? Any kind of "newbie guide" for it?

Simple things easy, more complex things you have to work at. No
dummies book that I know of.


>
> As much as I hate to flush all my dsssl-jadetex customizations, it seems like xsl-fo is going to be the way to go.


I think so.
How much work went into learning DSSSL and \tex?

regards


>
>
> ________________________________ From: Norm Tovey-Walsh
> Sent: Friday, June 11, 2021 11:00 AM
> To: Kevin Dunn
> Cc: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019
>
> Kevin Dunn <kdunn@hsc.edu> writes:
> > Thanks, Dave. You were helpful to me 10 years ago. The XEP PDF output
> > looks pretty nice with the default xsl stylesheet. There are some
> > fancy things I achieved with dsssl and jadetex, and I'm not sure how
>
> Thereâs a blast from the past!
>
> Iâve been chatting, off and on, with Peter Flynn about working on a way
> to use TeX as a formatting back end in the modern era. But itâs not in
> the top couple of reams of the todo list, at the moment.
>
> I expect the future is XML+CSS and thatâs what I have in mind for the
> xslTNG stylesheets. It would be entirely possible, of course, to
> generate XSL-FO, but it feels like custom-HTML output and custom-CSS fed
> through Antennahouse would be the shortest path to victory.
>
> PrinceXML would also work that way.
>
> AFAIK, there are no free formatters that take HTML+CSS and produce
> results comparable with FOP, which surprises me. (Not that the FOP level
> of output would satisfy your requirements; but the lack of reasonable
> open source print formatters is one of the things that leads me to
> ponder generating LaTeX. You know, like we did in the 90âs when we were
> young! :-))
>
>                                         Be seeing you,
>                                           norm
>
> --
> Norman Tovey-Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>
> https://nwalsh.com/
>
> > Linux. Because rebooting is for hardware upgrades.



-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
Docbook FAQ.