Having MathML and barcode support is a good thing. But I am not very
enthousiastic about the goal of providing support for both
out-of-the-box. Scratching pieces of functionality together and
integrating them is a different role than developing an application. I
am a Debian Linux user, and an advocate of the model of Debian (and
other distributions): development is one role, integration is another
role. I am horrified of the Apache packages, which make me have Xerces
and other libs many times on my computer.

I am in favour of promoting the MathML extension to a more visible
place. I have no opinion on JEuclid in XMLGraphics. Separating SVG
support from FOP core is OK with me.

Regards, Simon

On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 04:05:31PM +0100, Chris Bowditch wrote:
> Jeremias Maerki wrote:
> 
> >Devs,
> >
> >I'd like to have your thoughts about the following proposal. MathML and
> >barcodes are frequently asked for and I would consider it a service to
> >our users if we provided support for both out-of-the-box without people
> >having to scratch together the little pieces to make this stuff work.
> >JEuclid is AL1.1 and Barcode4J is AL2.0 licensed. So no worries about
> >redistribution. I'd like to promote the MathML extension out of the
> >examples directory where it seems to be a little hidden. We still have
> >the "plan" extension as a good example for FOP extensions. But I
> >wouldn't really want to integrate the MathML extension sources into the
> >main source tree where it adds to the existing blob of code. I'd rather
> >make SVG support separate and therefore optional and put both (SVG and
> >MathML) alongside each other in a separate place next to the main
> >sources. FOP without Batik-dependency has also been asked for a few
> >times which we could get almost for free if we did this. Barcode4J 1.0
> >as my proposed barcode package (what a surprise!) has its own FOP
> >extension and would simply be added as a JAR file in the lib directory.
> >I could do the necessary changes while doing the whole XML Graphics
> >Commons stuff which I really really really want to do really really soon
> >now. :-)
> 
> I am in favour of seeing MathML and barcode support out of the box in 
> FOP. Most people using XSL-FO for printed documents have a requirement 
> to add Barcodes and there are a small number of people asking for 
> Mathematic Formula representions. As you already mentioned it might be a 
> good idea to move the JEuclid code into a sub project of Xml Graphics. 
> Possibly the code that Siarhei Baidun is proposing to commit to Apache 
> in another thread.
> 
> Chris
> 

-- 
Simon Pepping
home page: http://www.leverkruid.nl

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