I just blew out about 4 hours trying to get fop.bat to run in the command prompt programmatically in windows. Turns out that the problem was the fop.bat file itself. It references a file "fop.xconf" by appending current directory + "\conf\fop.xconf". This turns out to be a programming killing feature when you try to run fop.bat using a Process object in C#.
#Steps to reproduce the bug 1. In Windows XP open the command prompt (cmd.exe). 2. Pay attention to the current directory. (In my case its C:\Documents and Settings\bmackey\) 3. Paste the following string: "C:\Program Files\Altova\FOP-0.95\fop.bat" -fo C:\StyleVisionTestRC\workaround\1.fo -pdf C:\StyleVisionTestRC\workaround\1.pdf (Where the fo file is a valid fo file that you happen to have and the pdf directory is valid) 4. Hit enter to run the program. 5. You will get a usage error. Scroll down to find the exception: "SEVERE: Exception java.io.FileNotFoundException: C:\Documents and Settings\bmackey\conf\fop.xconf (The system cannot find the path specified)" 6. Pay attention to the directory where its looking. It is looking at the current directory + "\conf\fop.xconf". Woops. #Workaround 1. In Windows XP open the command prompt (cmd.exe). 2. change the directory with "cd C:\Program Files\Altova\FOP-0.95" (no quotes) 3. Paste the following string: "fop.bat -fo C:\StyleVisionTestRC\workaround\1.fo -pdf C:\StyleVisionTestRC\workaround\1.pdf" (no quotes needed unless your arguments contain a space) 4. Hit enter to turn the program. Done. I'm not a batch file programmer, but glancing at fop.bat, the last line: "%JAVACMD%" %JAVAOPTS% %LOGCHOICE% %LOGLEVEL% -cp "%LOCALCLASSPATH%" org.apache.fop.cli.Main %FOP_CMD_LINE_ARGS% -c conf/fop.xconf %LOCALCLASSPATH% is likely the issue.
