Thanks for that.
I do have an "academic" oXygen license, which is inexpensive, For
non-commercial use. I just added the free version of XEP 4 as an
external tool and it ran perfectly. But for my so far benchmark
documents, no difference from FOP 0.93. I do have a problem with table
layouts that I couldn't figure yet with FOP 0.94 in general. FOP 0.93
seems to be the best of both FOP worlds currently. XEP's response though
gave the impression of faster processing with clearer and more organized
runtime output. I believe that Docbench is enhanced with some of Norm
Welsh's DocBook stylesheets.
It is not clear for me yet, if the regular oXygen 8 license will grant
upgrade to version 9 regular. I see a trial counter declining. Can
oXygen people please advise about that, about the new build to be made
available as upgrades, and about the regular release of oXygen 9?
Barton Wright wrote:
If you don't have either a XEP or oXygen license, RenderX's DocBench
bundle is a screaming bargain. For US$100 over the base price of XEP
Desktop, you get both. As I remember, what DocBench provides is the
standard oXygen Professional release, plus XEP in a directory parallel
to the FOP directory. There is very little integration, but then, not
much is needed. You run the standard oXygen, and can invoke a menu
function to generate output through XEP in addition to FOP. One minor
disadvantage is that DocBench starts oXygen from its own batch file,
not from the clean oxygen.exe executable (for Windows). The startup is
a little messy, and leaves a Command Prompt window hanging around.
I no longer run DocBench per se, but instead have separate oXygen and
XEP installations, and I call XEP from command-line build scripts.
As for FOP vs XEP, I can only speak to FOP 0.92 vs XEP 4.10. The
winner then was XEP by a mile. FOP-generated PDFs had trouble with
long tables over page breaks, and other problems that XEP sailed
through. I hear the FOP guys have made great strides since 0.92, and I
plan to give 0.94 another look. But here's a strong hint as to which
one's better: the PDF for Bob Stayton's DocBook XSL book is generated
with XEP.
That said, I caution you that there's just no way the RenderX guys
have caught up the latest oXygen 9.0 release, which only occurred a
few days ago. If you buy DocBench today, you will almost certainly
get oXygen 8.2 in the bundle. However, the oXygen guys are very good
about sending you the latest license file, even for DocBench users.
*From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Khaled Aly
*Sent:* Monday, November 05, 2007 2:09 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* [oXygen-user] Docbench
Hi
Would oXygen or users on list have more information about this bundle:
http://www.renderx.com/tools/docbench.html? Advantages it may offer
over standalone oXygen 9 for purpose of technical authoring. It refers
to DocBook/TEI, but not DITA, which is supported by oXygen 9. In which
ways may XEP (one of the main bundle components, which can also be
integrated with oXygen 9) be distinct from or advantageous to FOP .94?
And otherwise, would the added value be mainly the offered
stylesheets? And would it be the same oXygen UI?
Thanks
ka
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