Re: [xsl] XML to PDF (XSL:FO)

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Julie,

You have put your finger on two of the sore spots with XSL-FO.

In my experience the handling of keeps varies significantly across 
XSL formatters. In particular, expect this to be a major 
differentiator between a commercial processor and a free one.

As for graphics, they can also be a headache, and indeed, finding 
that you cannot define down what constitutes "adequate" handling of 
graphics is probably the earliest sign that your needs are pushing in 
the direction of layout-driven processing. If your graphics are small 
(so that floats and keeps have more room on the page to work, even as 
arranged by an automated engine's feeble brain) and if you can set up 
a system with good control over sizing and resolution (to mitigate 
the problems you mention there), you'll have better results. But 
mileage will always vary.

Cheers,
Wendell

At 12:51 PM 6/24/2008, you wrote:
> We use xsl-fo to generate course materials (in a "book" format) and
> have found there are two main difficulties that we cannot surmount.
> One of them is the keep-with-next is not up to par and the other is
> the way it treats graphics--although this may be a pdf issue that we
> are just more aware of now that we're generating with xsl-fo. We
> haven't come across anyone else experiencing this (inconsistent
> resizing of graphics and failure of the process when a graphic ends up
> being too big!) so we are looking for work-arounds. In general, we
> have definitely found that you have to live with the downsides in
> order to output complex publications with xsl-fo.





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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
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Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
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