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

  

___________________________________________________________________________________
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
___________________________________________________________________________________
  


___________________________________________________________________________________
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
___________________________________________________________________________________


-- 
--------
Peter Davis
 The Tech Curmudgeon - http://www.techcurmudgeon.com
Ideas Great and Dumb - http://www.ideasgreatanddumb.com