Re: How to nicely print XHTML to PDF

[Janko Hauser <janko@need-brain.de>]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:18:22 +0100
Thomas Schrader <laborator@web.de> wrote:

> Hi everybody,
> 
> would you please put this right, if I'm mistaken.
> 
> Isn't ConTeXt capable to typeset XML? And isn't
> it really simple to make XHTML from HTML?
> 
In theory, yes :-), practically it can be a huge effort.

> So, is there any obstacle against using ConTeXt as
> customizable quality-typesetting backend for
> (readjusted/simplyfied) (X)HTML pages? What about
> power/complexity? How to style output?
> 

I think pdf from xhtml is a very good usecase for context. Although I
wouldn't think to do it directly, but transform the xhtml somewhat to
a context friendly xml. If you generate modern xhtml on your site, you
will have most of the styling in css files and have mostly structural
information in the xhtml. A tool can decide with the help of the css
definitions in the tags which layout macros it should use.

On the other side I do not think, that this approach is the equivilant
to the print function of the modern browsers.

__Janko Hauser