Hi,

On 1 August 2011 22:42, Dag Wieers <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Only recently looking into FOP for creating PDF output that is highly
> customized (eg. corporate identity) I am feeling disappointed in (the
> expectations that I had in) FOP.
>
> Either because I do not find any useful examples, or because most of what I
> do find is very complicated, while we are basically only interested in
> changing styles, adding a header/footers, cover-page or an index.
>

I presume that you have re-read the references from FAQ #2.  That
answers any questions that I have ever had and certainly covers most
of the things you mention above.  But of course you have to learn
XSL-FO.

> My own toolchain (using docbook2odf and unoconv) is in many ways easier for
> end-users to customize than FOP or dblatex, because it is a matter of
> tweaking styles in OpenOffice and using that template during conversion,
> even when docbook2odf is less complete as an implementation (docbook2odf
> certainly is missing basic functionality and integration with specific
> docbook constructs).
>

Allowing interactive styling is a nice idea, but only if whatever is
done interactively does not have to be re-done each time the document
is converted.

> I am leaning towards improving docbook2odf to the point where it can do what
> I need (cover-page, better/customizable admonition support, options for
> enabling indexes, etc...), basicaly all the things that are not configurable
> by styles.
>

Well the last thing inexperienced users need is another non-standards
compliant, partly complete implementation.

You need to create a project and attract some helpers to progress
towards standards compliance if you want to provide an alternative
toolchain.

And if you are using it corporately maybe you can attract some funding
as well. :-)

> Does anyone known of any good examples for creating nice customized PDF
> output using FOP ? Or can we create some momentum in improving docbook2odf
> to have an alternative toolchain for PDF (and other formats) output.

My totally non-scientific survey of the examples on the asciidoc
homepage indicates that:

1. PDFs are mostly corporate users
2. they don't specify the toolchain or acknowledge asciidoc

So I think it is possible that there are many unacknowledged examples
out there that we don't know about and who are not going to release
you their configuration.

Your initial comment is that you are only new to FOP and its
configuration.  Instead of giving up quickly and committing to the
open ended effort involved in generating another toolchain I would
council you to first spend some reasonable effort learning how to
configure FOP (or to be exact the XSLT stage that generates the XSL-FO
that FOP renders).  See again FAQ #2.

Cheers
Lex

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