Re: DOCBOOK: Re: usage of SVG 1.0b2 module

[Steve Ball <Steve.Ball@zveno.com>]

Norman Walsh wrote:
> / "Maring, Steve" <Steve_Maring@tvratings.com> was heard to say:
> | I've applied the XSL:FO stylesheet in docbook-xsl-1.51.1
> | (http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/doc/) to generate XSL:FO
> | from the testsvg.xml file.  However, no SVG shows up in the XSL:FO.  Does
> | this have something to do with docbook-xsl-1.51.1 not knowing about SVG?
> 
> Uh, yeah, I guess I haven't added that to the FO stylesheets yet. My
> bad. File a bug report please. (What tool does the right thing with
> SVG embedded in FO?)

Apache's FOP can render SVG images in a FO document to the
resultant PDF.  Works quite well, but see below.
FOP uses Batik to do the rendering, and includes it in the
distribution.  However, I install the latest Batik, just to
make sure.

Using SVG is extremely useful, and not just for diagrams/pictures,
because it is so easily generated using XSLT.
For example, in certain kinds of documents I like to have
a fancy background graphic behind my chapter/section headings.
To do this I override the DocBook stylesheet's normal handling
of titles and create an embedded SVG with the title included
in the SVG, using a SVG <text> element.

The only problem I've had is with text inside the image
(ie. using SVG's <text> element).  I think it's a bug
either with FOP or Batik, but it doesn't seem to honour
the font-family setting.  You also need to do some magic
with the configuration file to get it to use PDF fonts
rather than drawing the glyphs (well documented on the
FOP website).

HTHs,
Steve Ball

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