Re: Table question/was Re: Whitespace questions

[Paul Tchistopolskii <paul@xxxxxxx>]

From: Rebecca Lundberg <rlundberg@xxxxxxxx>


> I am using xalan 1.1.6, xerces 1.1.3 and apache's fop_14 (from
> www.apache.org/fop)

...

> Is Clark's stuff any better than what I'm using right now?

James Clark's XT ( which implements XSLT, not XSL FO ) is 
fast, clean and almost bug-free. SAXON is also fast and 
clean, can not comment on robustness of SAXON yet, but 
it looks OK. There could be some minor things like SAXON 
being sensitive to some exotics VM's / configurations. - never
encountered that myself, but it seems some people saw that.
XT works everywhere, but is not 100% complete. SAXON is 
101% complete. ;-) 

Unfortunatelty, the implementations of XSLT ( those are probably 
'better' than xalan ) will not help you with XSL FO part of XSL
( To me it looks like the problems you are writing here are 
mostly the problems of XSL FO implementation you are using ).

I have not checked situation with XSL FO implemenations for a 
while, but if there was no serious movements ( and I think 
nothing serious has happened ) renderx.com XSL FO 
engine should be months ( if not years ) ahead any other 
XSL FO engine you will find. 

Also I know for sure that Sebastian's TeX-based solutions and 
I think probably Unicorn-FO's should have some other benefits, 
comparing them to renderx engine, but I think those benefits 
are from the side other than 100% conformant XSL FO's.

I'm glad I now can say this thing loudly in public place, 
because for a very long time I have nothing in common 
neither with renderx company nor with the XSL FO engine 
provided by renderx.com.

Rgsd.Paul.

PS. Ah - I forgot. I also think you are better not to assume 
FOP to be a robust implementation. I mean  that silent failures 
( or razing the exceptions ) was typical behavior of  the old 
FOP codebase. ( In case 'old codebase' of FOP  has changed 
significantly in last months, please disregard this comment. 
Last time when I've tried FOP was more than 6 months ago ).

I also don't know the situation with the latest codebase of 
renderx engine. Long time ago correct user-friendly diagnostics 
was given a high priority.

PPS. If by "Clark's stuff" you mean DSSSL:  

http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/#faq

"DSSSL has capabilities that XSL does not, and continues 
in use in the print publishing industry."

This is written on W3C website - this should be true ;-)



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