Re: [xsl] Office 2007, XSL-FO, and the Adobe "Save as PDF" (non)native-support...

["M. David Peterson" <xmlhacker@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hey Ken,

Thanks for your follow-up!  I truly appreciate this information :)

On 6/4/06, G. Ken Holman <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> At 2006-06-03 19:06 -0600, M. David Peterson wrote:

> :{)}  I'm teaching XSL next week, June 12-16 ... plenty of seats available!

Where at?  While I can't say for sure whether our locations will be
close enough to enable this, I do  VERY MUCH need to learn more about
XSL-FO.

If not next week, when is your next session/where?

I also owe Wendell and Tommie a visit...  Wendell and I attempted a
meet-up in Seattle about this time last year and my schedule had me no
where near Seattle when I had hoped I would be.  As such, its up to me
to make up for my lameness :D

With this in mind, are you on the East coast of the US any time this
Summer?  Would be FANTASTIC to take in one of your courses, then stop
by Mulberry to take in several courses that have always been on the
top of my list of "I NEED THIS!!!"

Or vice-versa > Mulberry/Tommie/Wendell first, followed by one of your
three day Fri/Sat/Sun courses?

One way or another, I need to figure out a way to make this happen...
Beyond the social side (which is just as important, in my opinion) I
need to take these courses! :D

> Not sure where you are going with this idea ... FO works well for
> final form, but not as a revisable form.
>
> You state "[embed meta data] + the ability to "Save as PDF..." + the
> connection that FO has to PDF = Opportunity for the XSL-FO community?"
>
> Since PDF is a target *rendering* for the *formatting* of XSL-FO, I
> think it is irrelevant that another tool also produces PDF.  There is
> no backwards path from PDF to FO.

That's what triggered all of this... If MSOfffice doesn't ship with
direct Save to PDF support, and instead as a separate add-in via a
download, then it seemed worth questioning whether it was worth the
effort to consider FO as a possible solution for developing an add-in
in which would allow for the possibly of more fine-tuned control of
the final PDF output.  Obviously with native, out of the box support,
there's not a lot of folks who would even consider other options....
But if this presented an opportunity to develop such a plug in as to
help promote the use of FO, then it seemed like it was at very least
worth traveling down this road to find out.

 That's where I was attempting to take this, although it was more
from a "is there a connection I need to be making or am I simply
connecting the "guilt by association" dots and not the actual "this
makes good, solid sense to go down this road a bit further."

My thought process was along the lines of connecting citations support
-- which, as mentioned, is something Bruce, myself, and a few other
folks have been trying to figure out how to connect Liveclipboard and
the GlobalClip extension I developed a while back with citations such
that when you copy from an online doc, all of the meta-data that is
related (in regards to citation information) is embedded into the
information that is passed to Liveclipboard as part of an XML package,
to then paste into Word and have it magically placed into all of the
right places.  Given the connection between the world of citations and
publishing, the "Office Open XML format + XSL-FO = final PDF ready for
online or print publication" idea popped into my head when Brian
posted the Adobe PDF announcement on Friday.

> >
> >Have I connected the wrong technology dots?
>
> That's difficult to say ... you might have subtle requirements of
> which I am unaware.

Does any of the above help clarify?  If not, no worries... obviously I
simply connected the wrong dots...  If, however, there is potential
here, then without a doubt, the information is now out there for folks
to use to make their own conclusions, and decide if there is potential
for business opportunity that maybe they hadn't realized was there.
If nothing else, hopefully this might help grease some gears, and get
folks such as yourself thinking about whether or not opportunity
exists, and if/how to act on this.

> And it is a bit vague to refer to "the printing industry".

See, this is where my lack of experience in this space comes shining
through :D
> XSL-FO is not intersecting the interactive word-processing world and
> bespoke book layout very much (my two books were laid out using
> XSL-FO, but that is surely not the norm, my content was already in
> XML before the contracts were negotiated), but it is making its mark
> in high-volume printing requirements.  I've heard of hundreds of
> thousands of monthly bills being printed in XSL-FO.  Stylesheets I've
> written for a New York customer produced 3 million pages in 60,000
> customized 50-page books.
>
> Are those companies in the "printing industry"?  Not traditionally,
> but they have new printing requirements they didn't have in the past.

Okay, cool... this is information that I wasn't aware of... This helps
clarify things a bit more... Thanks! :D
>

> To me a Word document would be written for very different reasons
> than an XML document targeted for formatting with XSL-FO.  Word is
> great for bespoke documents, XML+XSLT+XSL-FO is great for multiple
> XML documents with the same layout ... it doesn't make a lot of sense
> to me to write custom XML+XSLT+XSL-FO for a scenario where the layout
> and content of every document is different.

True... but if not mistaken, for the most part, in the land of
academia, there is an obvious exception in which Bruce has made it
known in no uncertain terms that this is something he feels needs to
happen to advance the toolsets currently available in this space.

Is this an exception to the rule, or just an oddball case that doesn't
warrant taking such an approach?

> So, for my customers needing the rigour of XML+XSLT+XSL-FO for the
> same layout for lots of XML, a revisable-form word-processing tool
> just isn't even considered.
>
> I hope this helps.

It does a ton!  There's obviously several follow-up points at various
points of the overall conversation, but without a doubt and am MUCH
more informed than I was 30 mins ago when I first read this...

Thanks Ken!  I truly appreciate your help :D
> . . . . . . . . . . . Ken
>
> --
> Registration open for XSLT/XSL-FO training: Wash.,DC 2006-06-12/16
> Also for XSL-FO/XSLT training:    Minneapolis, MN 2006-07-31/08-04
> Also for XML/XSLT/XSL-FO/UBL training: Varo,Denmark 06-09-25/10-06
> World-wide corporate, govt. & user group UBL, XSL, & XML training.
> G. Ken Holman                 mailto:gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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--
<M:D/>

M. David Peterson
http://www.xsltblog.com/