RE: [xsl] Need some help urgently

[Wendell Piez <wapiez at mulberrytech dot com>]

To add to what Mike says--

At 11:16 AM 10/15/01, he wrote:
> > Can anyone help me in knowing that why XSL cannot be
> > written to translate the xml to PDF.
> >
> > I asked this kinda question earlier also but I did not
> > get a very good response may be I was not clear that
> > time.
>
>I think you got a very clear answer before: it's possible, but extremely
>hard work. For example, if you are using a proportional font, you have to
>decide how many characters will fit on each line.

And "extremely" is an understatement here.

Mike is also being kind, because he is reading you to mean "XSL*T* [not 
just "XSL"] ... to translate the XML to PDF". He is very aware of the fact 
(although not all people are, particularly newer users) that XSL = XSLT + 
XSLFO, and that although XSL is indeed intended to provide general 
solutions to exactly the kind of problem you have -- XML to PDF -- that 
this is not meant to be done by XSLT alone.

Do some research into XSL Formatting Objects. Keep in mind that XSLFO 
technology is much less mature than XSLT.

It is also *theoretically* possible to go straight through XSLT to an 
output like PDF, but (a) it is very far from trivial (figuring out how many 
characters will fit on a line is just the tip of the iceberg), and (b) you 
will be reinventing what the XSL Recommendation itself will specify when 
the Formatting Objects part of the solution is done.

That having been said, FOs, while not "mature" or even "finished" are still 
already good enough to take you a certain distance. So don't start chopping 
a path through the unmarked wilderness, when there's a big highway 
construction project going on right by you (what? you haven't heard the 
drilling?).

Also, as others have described in recent weeks, there are other pathways. 
For example, many applications people use for page layout, which can create 
very nice PDF, can import HTML tolerably well these days. So XML via XSLT 
to clean HTML can get you much of the way to PDF.

Cheers,
Wendell




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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@mulberrytech.com
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