Re: [xsl] FOP - what, where, when, how?

Subject: Re: [xsl] FOP - what, where, when, how?
From: Joerg Heinicke <joerg.heinicke@xxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 16:29:10 +0100
Alastair Growcott wrote:
I'm looking at converting XML documents via XSL to PDF. I have looked in
the archives, etc. and I see a lot of references to something called FOP
by James Tauber. I even saw an article by someone which gave an example
of using it (which admittedly was not working), that looked similar to
what I am doing.

Firstly, the namespace reference I saw mentioned;

http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl/FO
> seems to be a broken link.

As you can see, it's the link from the Working Draft. The new one: http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format. You can find the XSL FO specification at http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/.



Secondly, I don't have Java on my machine. XT
comes as a nice Win32 executable. Does FOP?

Now, FOP is Java: http://xml.apache.org/fop.


Even while writing this post I have found out that FO is part of XSL,

Only for avoiding naming conflicts:


XSLT + XSL FO = XSL

but still lack much information that I will be studying up on. I am also
unsure about the nature of PDF and licensing issues, and what the
difference is between the FOP output and the stuff that Adobe's Acrobat
writer program produces.

I currently am successfully converting the XML to HTML via XSL such that
when I double click on the XML file, IE6 automatically runs and displays
the XML as HTML. Can I do this when converting into PDF? I.e. if I
double click on the XML it will automatically be displayed by Adobe
Acrobat reader?

No and never. XSL FO, to which you can transform via XSLT, and PDF is not the same. You still need a renderer. Maybe there will be a PDF-renderer-engine-plugin anytime. But until that date definitively not.


Regards,

Joerg

Here is a sample of how I am doing my HTML conversion. Is it possible
someone could edit it to work with FOP, and post it back?

sample.xml
----------

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="sample.xsl"?>
<mydoc>
<question>Are you there?</question>
<answer>Maybe!</answer>
</mydoc>

sample.xsl
----------

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<html xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
	xsl:version="1.0">
<head><title>Question and answer session</title></head>

<body>
<b>Question: </b><xsl:value-of select="/mydoc/question"/><br/>
<b>Answer: </b><i><xsl:value-of select="/mydoc/question"/></i><br/>
</body></html>

Many thanks for any assistance.

Alastair.

--


System Development
VIRBUS AG
Fon  +49(0)341-979-7411
Fax  +49(0)341-979-7409
joerg.heinicke@xxxxxxxxx
www.virbus.de


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