Re: fot2pdf backend

Subject: Re: fot2pdf backend
From: "Christof Drescher" <drescher@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 09:32:45 +0200
Hi!

Mark Wroth wrote:
> I've been experimenting with the fot2pdf backend, and
>can't get past some basic errors, which may be a
>function of something other than fot2pdf
>(my own ignorance being a major possibility).
>
> Specifically, fot2pdf runs, but produces an empty PDF document and a slew
of error/warnings of the form
>
> WARNING! Unsupported FlowObject 'text' skipped!
>
> Since all of the character data in the fot file appears to be
>in text elements, this is consistent with the empty
>document, but it seems I must be missing something elementary.

The error you've been experiencing comes from the problem that fot2pdf is
quite...ummm...strict in how it expects the flowobjecttree to be
well-formed.

Since PDF documents are designed for print, it needs a simple-page-sequence
around it, and text being part of a paragraph (or table-cell etc.). So if a
DSSSL-script start's some text from the beginning, it does not see it to
belong to any page-sequence - it says it is "unsupported" to be a child of
the root element (since the root element may only contain
simple-page-sequences). The same is if a text is not encapsulated by a
paragraph or anything like it (a header, footer, whatever...).

So, please check wether this "formal" structure is heeded; maybe check how
the fot2pdf-usage sample document (part of the distribution as sgml and
dsssl!) is structured.

I know many scripts are not that "clearly" structured, and I may even put in
some automatism about it (e.g. if you find a text, and it is not in a
paragraph, assume there is one).

Hope this helps,
Christof

P.S.: I will post a FAQ about fot2pdf usage in a couple of days about the
most common problems (e.g. font naming and the above mentioned structure
problems)


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