On 4/5/2013 4:40 PM, Gábor Kövesdán wrote:
Em 05-04-2013 22:16, maxwell escreveu:
One obvious disadvantage is that we've needed to understand LaTeX (not plain
TeX), since many
of the tweaks rely on changes to our LaTeX style sheets, or alternative LaTeX
packages. But
this has been an advantage at the same time, since the LaTeX typesetting is
quite mature and
has handled everything we've thrown at it.
Someone mentioned that dblatex uses Python. The amount of Python code in
dblatex is quite
small, and I've never had to do anything with it. The xslt code, otoh, I've had
to deal with
extensively, although most of that has had to do with odd things we're doing
with the alignment
of right-to-left text, and some linguistic data structures we've added to the
standard DocBook
structures.
Having this solution, would you still be interested in a more integrated
solution that follows
the conventions of the DocBook XSL stylesheets and allows tuning with
parameters and easy
customization? Are there any serious problems in dblatex that aren't solved for
you? Any
functionality that you preferred to be implemented in a different way?
Sorry to be late responding; my excuse is that I got married the day after this
email.
dblatex does have some parameters for tuning, see
http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/doc/manual/sec-params.html. My impression is that dblatex directly
implements many of the DocBook XSL parameters, and that dblatex handles internationalization the
same way that DocBook XSL does (although I could be mistaken).
I haven't run into any serious problems in dblatex. The only thing I would prefer is that the
longer xslt functions be broken into smaller ones. When I do a major customization, I have to copy
and change an entire function, and when the function is long, that's a nuisance. And if the author
of dblatex changes that function in a later version, then I'll have to hunt down the diffs between
my changed copy and the function I copied from, then make those changes in the newer version.
That's pretty much unavoidable given the way xslt works, but it's easier with small functions.
Or of course if it were done with Python instead of xslt, I'd be still happier, because I understand
Python reasonably well. Xslt, otoh, always trips me up when I try to do even simple things. But I
guess that's just my personal experience!
--
Mike Maxwell
[email protected]
"My definition of an interesting universe is
one that has the capacity to study itself."
--Stephen Eastmond
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
