Re: XSL FO -> PDF

On Thursday, July 13, 2000, Rhonda Fischer wrote:

> I have been assigned the task of assessing an appropriate tool
> to generate PDF files from XSL FO. I am hoping to receive some
> input on your preferred solution and features that you
> appreciate and/or find frustrating.
> 
> I am keen to recommend a product that is supported and continues
> to be developed with updates issued and is very much platform
> independant, using Java.  I am working on Linux-i686-2.2.16
> using SAXON.

Apache's Coccon/FOP meets your criteria. I've had some experience
with it, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it mature.  It
has the potential to make everything fast and cheap: Web server 
stores your XML source along with an XSL stylesheet, and serves up
PDF dynamically on user demand -- with built-in caching.

But at this point, in my environment at least, the performance is
unacceptable with the "real" documents I ran through it (small- to
modest-sized stuff marked up in DocBook).

For comparison purposes, you might check out Arbortext's Epic
e-Content Engine:

  http://www.arbortext.com/Products/Selection_Guide/E3/e3.html

It doesn't meet your platform-independenrce criterion, therefore
almost certainly is not 100% Java (although at least some of it is
Java), is up at the high end in cost, and may for all I know just
be vaporware at this point.

But as far as I can tell from their product literature, the
intention at least is completely XSL-based -- that is, not
realized through proprietary (non-XML) means, OmniMark, or any 
other print-transformation relic from the olden days.

   -- Mike Smith


-- 
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