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

[Winchel 'Todd' Vincent III <winchel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I do not comment often, but this thread caught my eye.

PDF is great as a page description format and as a web-based electronic document interchange format for "finished" documents.  PDF isn't great (and isn't intended, I suspect), to be editable, so its not great for "unfinished" documents or for electronic content that you want to edit or incorporate into a new document.

Apache FOP and XSL-FO are also great at turning XML into a PDF, *considering* that both are free.  Apache FOP is not a full implementation of XSL-FO, so in this sense, you can't do everything you want to do with it, but, the website states clearly what is supported and what is not supported and, it is free, the latter point making it extremely valuable, IMHO.  If you are trying to use Apache FOP to move PDF documents to high-end printing (which we do not do), then perhaps it falls short (I don't know), but if you are simply trying to publish PDF to the web, then the PDF output is more than acceptable.

Microsoft Word format is good at editing and rendering in MS Word (I'm a long-time Word Perfect user and prefer Word Perfect, but reality is that we have to use MS Word). Editing is MS Word's primary purpose.

MS Word and PDF, as document formats, simply aren't meant do to the same thing.  As a result, more often that not, if PDF is good at A, the MS Word is not good at A and visa versa with respect to B, C, D, E . . . etc.

We looked for a long time for a tool that could use our existing XSL-FO stylesheets (the ones we use to move XML to PDF) to convert the same XML to RTF.  That is, we wanted to do this:

XML[1] --> XSL-FO[1] --> Apache FOP --> PDF
XML[1] --> XSL-FO[1] --> ?Tool? --> RTF

We haven't found that tool.

We also looked for tools that would convert PDF to RTF.  While you can find plenty of tools that will do this conversion, the output still isn't any better to edit than the original PDF.  Again, as document formats, PDF and Word weren't meant to do the same thing.  Since PDF is good at viewing, Word-to-PDF works reasonably well (there are sometimes problems with pages not converting properly on large, complex documents), but since PDF is not meant for editing, PDF-to-Word (or RTF) simply doesn't work (if the output you seek is meant for meaningful editing).

As a result, we started working with Microsoft's WordML to do this:

XML[1] --> XSL-FO[1] --> Apache FOP --> PDF
XML[1] --> XSL-FO[1] --> Our Tool --> WordML

We found that it was easier (indeed, much easier) to do this:

XML[1] --> XSLT --> WordML

While the latter is easier, it does not help us re-use and leverage our XSL-FO stylesheets, which is something we would like to do.

<Robert>
My point, which was perhaps not clearly made, is that people do not use 
PDF an an end result document format while keeping an XML source.
</Robert>

We do.  :-)

While it is true that people pass around the PDF (or Word, or Word Perfect, etc.) document and are not likely to pass around the associated XML, we do the following:

XML[1] ---> HTML (or XHTML)
XML[1] ---> PDF
XML[1] ---> WordML

. . . and then we make all of the formats available.  

Currently, we have to maintain:

XSLT[a] for HTML
XSL-FO for PDF
XSLT[b] for WordML

. . . which is not ideal.  Good news is that the XML[1] input is always the same and this has some value.  

My $0.02 for what its worth.

Thanks,
 
Todd
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Winchel "Todd" Vincent III
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Phone : 404.822.4668
Fax     : 770.216.1633
Email : Todd.Vincent@xxxxxxxxxxxx
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Koberg [mailto:rob@xxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2006 5:23 PM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [xsl] Office 2007, XSL-FO, and the Adobe "Save as PDF" (non)native-support...

ufff Tommie... you have eyes in the back of your head. We can't even be 
bad on the weekend :)

My point, which was perhaps not clearly made, is that people do not use 
PDF an an end result document format while keeping an XML source. It is 
the document. When people realize that it is not easy to change styling 
or even change an 'a' to a 'the' in a PDF they may want to convert to an 
XML format for *XSL* styling (something I am painfully aware of).

As for the available tools to convert XML source to PDF, they (the 
tools) are severely lacking (for lack of more accurate wording).

I understand this to be general knowledge rather than something that 
needs to be backed up. I would welcome actual facts that do away with 
the general knowledge/perception.


Mulberry Technologies List Owner wrote:
> Friends --
> 
> Because some of the tools used to create PDF from XML use XSL, XSL-List 
> is an appropriate place for a discussion of tools to convert XML to PDF, 
> and even for a discussion of the value of such tools. I would prefer 
> that the discussion stay related to XSL - so discussions of the relative 
> merits of Word versus PDF (an odd contest, in my opinion, because they 
> perform such different functions) does not belong on XSL-List.
> 
> If you want to continue this discussion here please:
> 
>   - stick to topics that are directly related to XSL
>   - refrain from name-calling (either about people or products)
>   - refrain from defensiveness
> 
> Saying that some product sucks, or that someone is self promoting,
> contributes nothing of value to the discussion. Comparing apples and
> oranges and disparaging one because it is not the other is
> disingenuous and unattractive.
> 
> In other words: play nicely! Please.
> 
> -- Tommie