Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: About FO (was db2latex)

[Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian dot rahtz at computing-services dot oxford dot ac dot uk>]

Jeffrey Franks writes:
 > XML/XSL and SGML/DSSSL landscape looks pretty bleak for FO and PDF
 > from a newbie's viewpoint. I thought this stuff was ready to use
 > without pain.

depends what you call "without pain"! some people find these systems
more than adequate, and easy to set up. others find them either
inadequate, or hard to set up.

 > I've rendered in HTML without customization just to close the
 > loop on my markup (and give me confidence process is doing
 > something right). Do I need to do the same with PDF (just
 > to make sure that the process works)?

yes, see what happens. maybe you'll be perfectly happy

 > Do you ever find you need to "tweak" the original XML markup
 > to get an acceptable PDF result? Hopefully, answer is "no" since
 > "yes" violates separation between content and style even if style
 > is stretched to mean processing environment.

Personally, I sometimes

 - edit text to make it fit better
 - insert processing-instructions, eg to force a page-break
 - hack the stylesheets in some way
 - very occasionally, say "to hell with this", format the text
   elsewhere and import as a graphic

I doubt if other people could answer an honest "no" to your question

Sebastian


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