Hello, I'm not specifically aware of other external explicit requests for this upgrade of the PDFBox version used in FOP. For comparison, there were past JIRA tickets to upgrade FOP to use various versions of PDFBox version 2.0.*, including https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOP-2562 for the upgrade from PDFBox major version 1 to 2.
>From a client standpoint on my part utilizing the PDFBox and FOP projects, it seems rather desirable to co-opt the modern versions, features, and paradigms of both projects in the dependency pipeline. >From a development standpoint with these Apache SF projects, I could maintain private/downstream forks of these repositories that synchronize the FOP code to the latest PDFBox code, but it could be more cumbersome to update over time due to further divergence upstream. For this reason I reckoned it mutually beneficial to volunteer my changes for this upgrade, for community development to build on that synchronization with the latest versions of both projects. However, if there is a superseding project priority to maintain compatibility with existing client uses of FOP that specifically depend on the legacy PDFBox major version 2, and if the decision grounds of when to implement an inter-dependency upgrade to the contrary are more nuanced than the factor of expeditiousness, then I do understand if my changes won't be (or are not currently) admissible for the Apache SF projects. Based on these points, I appreciate your feedback and decision on whether or not my proposed upgrade is plausible for inclusion at this juncture. Sincerely, Mark E.
