Hello Jeremias.

> Can we take a step back? Let's look at the possibilities:
> 
> 1. URI resolver: ...
> 2. URI to InputStream resolver: ...
> 3. URI to FopImage resolver: ...

Thanks for the round-up, i think thats make the needs clearer!
These points are the logic extension of my initial proposal.

> Wouldn't it solve any possible requirement to provide a 
> central registry
> in FOP where implementations of these interfaces (all three) are
> provided? By default, FOP provides its own basic 
> implementations and our
> customers (Cocoon for example) could plug in their SourceResolver and
> CatalogResolver as necessary.

Yes! This would be perfect.

> Actually, that was what I originally planned to do by 
> introducing Avalon
> (Framework). Its Serviceable/ServiceManager pair would have provided
> this infrastructure (allowing easy interfacing with Cocoon). I don't
> think it's a big problem to write some basic infrastructure to provide
> this (extending FOUserAgent or writing some FOPEnvironment class).
> Avalon would provide that already, as would probably other frameworks
> (such as Hivemind). In the end it depends on how much we will want to
> write ourselves and not depend on other libraries. Given the recent
> events in Avalon-land (and around it), I don't have a problem 
> with going
> our own way although it doesn't sound ideal to me. Batik has done the
> same.

After a browsing a bit more in the FOP wiki i found this interesting proposal
http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?FOPAvalonization
together with Bugzilla Bug #14419 (seems two years old).

Is it still planned to avalonize FOP? Regarding the last postings i suppose it is not, 
but i do not know if this is the opinion of the whole FOP communiy. (I personally 
would still prefer the avalon-way, btw).

I think FOP desperately need a central resolving mechanism of any kind.

Concerning the further steps i've two questions:

1. Are there any deeper thoughts already done for the next major release of FOP 
concering source resolving? (i've had not yet the time to take a deeper look into the 
codebase)

2. Is there any chance or need (besides of mine) to get a very primitive resolving 
capability built in the existing maintance release of fop (0.20.5)? - because it still 
seems a long way for the next major release.

Stefan

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