On Jan 30, 2008, at 13:01, Jeremias Maerki wrote:
Hi Jeremias, Vincent,
<snip />
However, there's one thing in this context that is still on my list
and
that I want to change eventually: We have multiple places where we
create a new TransformerFactory. It's always the platform default that
is used. Some FOP users have asked before that there be a default that
is set to and applies to FOP only, i.e. we need a central
SAXTransformerFactory for FOP.
I agree with the intention, but not with duplicating the endorsed
standards mechanism, as noted in the other thread.
The context where this is applicable, is not really simple CLI-usage,
so my reasoning would be:
If an embedding user needs to instantiate the basic
TransformerFactory himself, FOP should probably simply keep a
reference to that, and use that single factory internally.
For example, a user could decide to force a hard dependency on Saxon:
SAXTransformerFactory tFactory = (SAXTransformerFactory)
net.sf.saxon.TransformerFactoryImpl.newInstance()
If we make it possible for him to pass this factory into the
FopFactory or FOUserAgent, and we replace all internal references to
TransformerFactory to use this instance, that should provide him with
more than enough flexibility.
[Vincent:]
Using a TransformerFactory just to serialize data into an XML file
may
sound a bit weird (this has nothing to do with XSLT). It appears that
Xerces defines an XMLSerializer class dedicated to that.
<snip />
It's not weird at all, if you look at what is needed to serialize
your data into a different format --possibly non-XML.
Using the XMLSerializer, you would either:
a) need a different sort of Serializer (properietary?)
b) if the target is still XML, you /could/ add an XSLT step before
the serialization
Now, looking at it this way, why not simply use an identity
Transformer to begin with. If your output target changes, all you
need to do is write a stylesheet (which is much simpler than
implementing your own Serializer), and alter one or two lines of Java
code (some more if you also want the stylesheet to be pluggable).
Cheers
Andreas
