Re: [xml/sgml] db2latex-xsl and alternatives for DocBook XML to PDF
unfortunately, the db2latex-xsl project seems to be dead on the
upstream end. The last release was on 2004-01-30, called
0.8pre1 :-( Questions and suggestions on the mailing list
remain unanswered. Of course, we can fix this and that on the
Debian side, but I don't believe we have the human power to do
it properly without living upstream. Alternatives are:
- dblatex (not yet in Debian, uses Perl :-( and XSL, active
upstream, XSL parts seem to be based on db2latex-xsl, maybe
not buildable from sources)
Have heard of some reasonable output from dblatex, but tha it still
needs much work and requires much tweaking. Not well-enough informed
(i.e. haven't tested it) to offer any sprt of authoritative opinion.
- fop (currently in contrib, depends on J2RE, should be compiled
with gcj for performance anyway, but I don't know whether this
would work)
despite the frozen developement since 12/2003, FOP does surprisingly
well in implementing most of the xsl-fo spec. IOW, it seems to work
quite well for most processing. in fact, it's part of the official DITA
open toolkit: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dita-ot/
Not perfect, but seems to be one of the best (free) solutions.
- passivetex (also not very active upstream, AFAIK)
passivetex is dead. have confirmed with upstream that further
development is not worth the effort.
What are your experiences and opinions?
I've been testing FOP extensively with complex DocBook documents and
have yet to find any problems. Then again, it is a java-based processor.
FWIW, there are folks in the Fedora Documentation Project who are
currently working on building FOP & Saxon with gcj. I'd be happy to
connect everyone (for some reason, the emails on this week have not been
posted to the fedora-docs-list). I think it'd be great if we could pool
all this expertise to get FOP & Saxon built with gcj.
From what I understand, the current problem is that FOP depends on
Batik, and Batik uses proprietary APIs in the Sun JRE, which are not
required - but that's as far as my knowledge extends.
Shall we (Debian) take over db2latex-xsl?
Only if we can harness someone to continue to develop the package, plus
maintain it. But I really dunno - no experience testing this tool.
Shall we package dblatex?
I dunno. Ditto above.
Shall we try to gcj-compile fop?
Absolutely! Doing so would be doing the free software community a great
service.
Are there more alternatives to db2latex-xsl?
I've heard good things about xmlroff - though it's also still under
development. IMO, some test processing needs to be done...
http://xmlroff.sourceforge.net/
Call me old-school, but I prefer xsl-fo -> pdf tools that only require
modification/customization of the the xsl-fo files (which are XML),
rather than having to use TeX-based customization. But that's only my
$0.02 - we should let the users decide...
HTH.
Cheers,
Mark
____________________________________________________________
Mark Johnson <mrj@debian.org>
Debian XML/SGML: <http://debian-xml-sgml.alioth.debian.org>
Home Page: <http://linux.duke.edu/~mark/>
GPG fp: DBEA FA3C C46A 70B5 F120 568B 89D5 4F61 C07D E242
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