Well...not exactly, IMHO.
> What a person wanting to put documents in a Word-readable format wants
is to
> be able to take his original XML file and turn it into something that
can be
> used by someone else. In that case, what is necessary is an XSLT to
convert
> the XML into ODF or whatever.
By analogy, if I want to put XML data in PDF format, do I write XSLT to
convert it to PDF? We don't do that now. We write an XSLT script to
covert to XSL-FO, then the FOP engine converts to PDF.
The FOP engine is a converter from XSL-FO to something else. Word, ODF,
RTF, PDF, text, whatever. We all already write XSLT scripts to
transform from data (XML) to XSL-FO. I'm not trying to be argumentative
at all, just also not demanding of a project team that's providing me a
great tool at no cost to me. I'd like to keep RTF, or in it's absence
have something I can use in its place. Also, people who ask for things
should be prepared to chip in and help.
BTW, also IMHO, it'd be cleaner to have one XSLT "super-script" to
convert from XSL-FO to ODF (or OOXML or whatever Microsoft calls their
"open" standard). If I write an XSLT script to transform data in XML to
an ODF document then I write it for each schema. So if I want to
generate both PDF and ODF then I'm forced to write two XSLT scripts (one
to XSL-FO and another to ODF). If we wrote an admittedly rather complex
XSLT script to transform from XSL-FO to ODF then we'd only write it
once. It's an academic point, since I think writing such an XSLT script
is outside the bounds of the FOP project. No scope creep here, please.
Just my 2 cents....
-- Mark C. Allman,
PMP
-- Allman
Professional
Consulting, Inc.
-- 617-947-4263
--
www.allmanpc.com
BusinessMsg -- the
secure, managed,
J2EE/AJAX
Enterprise IM/IC
solution.
On Wed, 2007-08-08 at 14:40 -0700, Nicol Bolas wrote:
> Ultimately, I guess, it depends on what you're using FOP for.
>
> I see XSL-FO as a means to print files. Or store them in a printable format.
> XSL-FO is not an interchange format; it is not PDF, nor should it be looked
> at as such. It exists to be converted into something based on the semantics
> defined in the XSL-FO specification.
>
> For all their promises of WYSIWYG, neither Word nor OpenOffice (nor the
> formats they read) are WYSIWYG. Their formats cannot exactly conform to the
> XSL-FO specification. They can come close, but they're not the same.
>
> What a person wanting to put documents in a Word-readable format wants is to
> be able to take his original XML file and turn it into something that can be
> used by someone else. In that case, what is necessary is an XSLT to convert
> the XML into ODF or whatever.
>
> In any case, RTF lacks the full degree of expressiveness possible from
> XSL-FO anyway, so some information is going to get lost. What's the point of
> doing the XSL-FO transform to begin with if you didn't want your stuff to
> have a particular look to it? It's like wanting to use a broken CSS renderer
> for your HTML; you may as well not have bothered with the CSS to begin with.
>
> Plus, there's the fact that ODF attempts to retain some basic semantic
> information, which has already been lost by the time the XSL-FO comes
> around. Since this information cannot be recovered, the ODF file produced
> from an XSL-FO would be, at best, visually functional. But ideas on what
> constitutes a title or whatever are completely lost. One would get much more
> functional ODF files by writing a custom XSLT for the format. Plus, the
> format isn't exactly that difficult to use.
>
>
> Mark C. Allman wrote:
> >
> > I only meant that if we replace the RTF capability with something
> > equivalent. I use the RTF generation so that I can then convert a few
> > things to MS Word (can't ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room). I
> > think "ODF" was in the post I replied to, so I just used that as an
> > example.
> >
> > What I do now is the following:
> >
> > doc.xml --------------|
> > doc.pdf
> > |--> XSLT ENGINE --> doc.fo --> FOP --> {
> > doc.rtf }
> > translator_doc.xsl
> > --| .....
> >
> > Putting something into FOP to generate ODF wouldn't make much sense,
> > IMHO. I think it'd just be another xslt script to translate the FO file
> > to ODF. Or write a plug-in for OpenOffice to read in FO files
> > (obviously another project!).
> >
> > I think we'll lose users if we don't keep something that lets them
> > generate docs that are interoperable with the 800 pound gorilla. How we
> > do that is the question.
> >
> > Just my 2 cents....
> >
> > -- Mark C. Allman,
> > PMP
> > -- Allman
> > Professional
> > Consulting, Inc.
> > -- 617-947-4263
> > --
> > www.allmanpc.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > BusinessMsg -- the
> > secure, managed,
> > J2EE/AJAX
> > Enterprise IM/IC
> > solution.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 11:29 +0200, Vincent Hennebert wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Mark,
> >>
> >> Mark C. Allman a écrit :
> >> > Drop RTF with nothing to replace it, e.g., ODF? I'd rather not.
> >> >
> >> > Swap out RTF with, say, ODF? Sounds great to me.
> >> >
> >> > I'd even volunteer some time to help with development. I seem to
> >> > remember something about Java.... ;-]
> >>
> >> Thanks for your offer to help!
> >>
> >> However... would that make sense to produce ODF from XSL-FO? There is no
> >> semantic construction at all in FO, whereas there is some in ODF. The
> >> other way around looks much more useful to me; as style informations are
> >> stored using FO, this should be very easy to convert an ODF document
> >> into plain XSL-FO.
> >>
> >> Typically the transformation chain:
> >> XML —> XSL-FO —+—> RTF
> >> |
> >> +—> PDF
> >> would be replaced by:
> >> XML —+—> XSL-FO —> PDF
> >> |
> >> +—> ODF
> >>
> >>
> >> WDYT?
> >> Vincent
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
