Re: Status of FOP

Arved,

> What's gotten me a little bit riled up is the use of FOP as a basis of
> comparison for commercial implementations. I think this is unfair to the user
> community. FOP is not pretending to be ready, and I take it a little bit amiss
> when it's used as the standard of comparison by commercial software. I'm
> pretty thick-skinned, but to be honest I'd like it if the commercial
> implementations compare to each other, not to FOP. I know it adds lustre
> to the product marketing when you can say "our product X kicks Apache
> XML FOP's ass", but this is not a proper comparison at the present. When
> FOP announces a production release, then compare to FOP and let the fur fly.
> :-)

It's not always about marketing. FOP is by far the _best known_ engine - backed
with Apache's strength, cited in all XSL FO tutorials I know, popularized by Sun
people on conferences... No wonder it serves as a common gauge; for many, XSL FO
and FOP are synonyms. FOP is not GPL, and is considered as an alternative to
commercial implementations in many projects; why should I treat it in a special
way in comparisons?

To avoid marketing tricks and biased statements, the best thing would be an
independent review of XSL FO processors. In my opinion, FOP can hardly be
excluded from it.

Merry Christmas,
Nikolai Grigoriev

RenderX






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