Re: XSL-FO to PDF?

[Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com>]

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Hi, Renaud,

In a nutshell, my use is a form of database publishing from two XML 
files.  The first file is *like* XSL-FO, but also contains some 
namespaced constructs.  This XML file is the page template ... it 
represents the layout, the static portions of the page, and the 
locations where various "live" data should get plugged in.

The second XML contains the live data, extracted from a database.  There 
might be thousands or tens of thousands of records of information to 
publish.

So for each main element in the live data file, we use the template 
file, but plug in the live data and generate a beautiful, formatted 
document.  The data may contain plain text, text with some formatting, 
and references to graphics and images in various formats.

It definitely needs to support "advanced" typesetting (beautiful 
paragraphs, tracking and kerning, ligatures, multiple languages, etc.).  
It needs to support full color (mostly CMYK), most widely used fonts 
(T1, TT/OT, CID, etc.)  It also needs to produce finished pages at a 
rate of thousands or tens of thousands of pages per minute.

TeX has the features I want, but I'm still trying to determine the best 
way to use it.  ConTeXt is particularly attractive for its built-in XML 
support, simplefonts support, pdfTeX support and minimals packaging, 
among other things.

-pd


On 11/14/2010 5:48 PM, Renaud AUBIN wrote:
> XSLT is fully adapted to XML/XML(fo or other target schema) since it 
> was the design basis…
>
> My experience is:
> − good xslt is (relatively) easy to design as soon as you master the 
> underlying data model
> − xsltproc is REALLY REALLY fast for xslt 1 processing
> − if you want something smarter, go for java with saxon/xerces, which 
> is performant too…
>
> I'm the devil's advocate but what's your need to use ConTeXt. I have 
> not read all your threads but if you just need:
> − to produce pdfs from xml data
> − without advanced typesettings
> you could use xslt to produce DocBook 5 xml file, include them using 
> <xi:include href="./data/stuff.xml"/>, configure your layout with an 
> intermediate xslt + Fo xml config…
>
> Once more, it depends on your original ecosystem and constraints…
>
> If you provide a use case, I should provide a sample if you don't need 
> it within a couple of hours (but a couple of days)…
>
> Best regards,
>
> Renaud
>
>
> Le 14/11/2010 22:36, Peter Davis a écrit :
>> On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Hans Hagen<pragma@wxs.nl>  wrote:
>>
>>    
>>> On 13-11-2010 4:14, Peter Davis wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>> On 11/13/10 6:03 AM, Renaud AUBIN wrote:
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>> Uh ? Give FOP a try…http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/1.0/index.html
>>>>> Could you describe your target chain ? XML → FO → PDF ?
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>> Actually, I could write some XSLT to convert the XSL-FO into TeX or
>>>> ConTeXt. But I was thinking it might be beneficial to use ConTeXt to
>>>> process the XML (XSL-FO) directly ... get it all under one roof, so to
>>>> speak.
>>>>
>>>>        
>>> faster too
>>>      
>> Interesting point.  I initially assumed it would be faster to do all my XML
>> processing in ConTeXt, but it occurred to me that perhaps using XSLT to or
>> even home-grown XML processing, I could generate a stream of TeX that could
>> be processed while I'm still producing it.  So one process might be looking
>> at successive data records and generating TeX for the various pages, and
>> another process could be simultaneously running TeX to typeset those pages.
>>
>>
>> Plausible?
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>> -pd
>>
>>    
>>
>>
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-- 
--------
Peter Davis
  The Tech Curmudgeon - http://www.techcurmudgeon.com
Ideas Great and Dumb - http://www.ideasgreatanddumb.com


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___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
archive  : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
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