Subject: Re: [xsl] xsl-fo and professional publishing From: "Eliot Kimber ekimber@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2014 21:06:24 -0000 |
I'm happy to be proven wrong on my no-FO-in-publishing assertion--mine is based on what I've seen in my Publishing clients, but then I have those clients largely because they don't already have a good XML solution, so there's very likely some selection bias there. Liam: are you able to disclose who any of these larger publishers are? I don't doubt your assertion, just curious who they are. It does make sense that for fiction, in particular, it would be entirely realistic to use XSL-FO and some relatively simple parameterization of details like page geometry, fonts, and chapter opener decoration to produce good-quality books. Cheers, E. bbbbb Eliot Kimber, Owner Contrext, LLC http://contrext.com On 6/13/14, 3:48 PM, "Liam R E Quin liam@xxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >On Fri, 2014-06-13 at 13:10 +0000, jfrm.maurel@xxxxxxxxx >jfrm.maurel@xxxxxxxxx wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I wonder whether xml + xsl + xsl-fo is a current practise in >> professional publishing for technical books at least in Europe. > >To give a counterpoint to Eliot's response, XSL-FO is very, very widely >used in professional publishing; the largest publishers use XSL-FO (and >in some cases XHTML + CSS) for most of their fiction and mainstream >texts. > >There are relatively few publishers using it, but between them they >produce most of the books you see - although there's much more diversity >in Europe than in the USA in that regard. > >The reasons are (1) they need to produce lots of books that look >similar; (2) they need to produce ebooks in XHTML, not just PDF (e.g. >for Kindle); (3) they need to minimise hand-work. > >Viable alternatives for a single book include Scribus (open source), >XHTML + CSS (but the formatters that are good enough are expensive and >for technical work there are severe limitations; however, that's what >O'Reilly is now doing), Adobe InDesign or Framemaker, and many other >tools. It's *possible* to use MS Word, but you need a lot of discipline, >and at the end of the process making an ebook will be a pain although >there are products to help. > >There's even at least one course taught on using XSL-FO for publishers, >at the Stuttgart media centre. > >Liam > >-- >Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ >Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ >Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml
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