Robert P. J. Day wrote:

> > Only if you follow the instructions everywhere else. You still have a
> > problem either in your build or in your runtime environment. I frankly
will
> > not take the time to help you find it.
>
> in the first place, the major problem here is that those instructions
> are, in some critical cases, misleading or just plain missing.

In no material respect is this true, at least after the patches that have
already been made to CVS and provided to you through this mailing list.

> more to the point, as you may recall, one of your earlier pieces of
> advice was to not run FOP directly, but to invoke it through fop.sh,
> which turned out to make no difference whatever and was a script you
> turned out not to fully understand anyway.

Well, here is the very first response to your graphics questions:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fop-user&m=105254830813143&w=2
in which I state: "So, you can hack fop.sh if you wish, but if you do,
then make sure you hack build.xml as well, because otherwise if you try to
build FOP from source down the road, you will do so without JIMI or JAI
support."

Based on the subsequent history, your next response should be "Oops. I have
already done that." Then we move forward to get it built properly. Instead
what we got was:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fop-user&m=105256848322848&w=2
a rant about how cumbersome and awkward it was for FOP to require
installation in a specific spot.

As for my advice about fop.sh, a standard practice when debugging a problem
similar to yours is to isolate the differences between an environment that
works and one that doesn't. So I stand by my advice to go back to stuff that
we know works until we find the piece that caused the problem. I know fop.sh
well enough, but am and should be embarrassed for my misreadings of how the
CLASSPATH was being built. In fairness to myself I must point out that if
there is nothing wrong with the compile-time environment, then I must look
for something in the runtime environment that explains the fact that your
system doesn't work when so many others do.

The only other parts of your posting that require a response from me:

> any time you want some help improving the documentation, let me know.
> i've written a *lot* of documentation and courseware in my time, and
> i'm pretty good at it.

We're glad for any help that you can offer. Just understand that "this is
*really* cumbersome and awkward" is not nearly as helpful as a patch to the
code and/or doc that makes it less cumbersome and awkward.

> but i have no interest in writing anything along the lines of, "just
> do it this way and don't ask questions."

FOP user doc is written for a general audience. I don't care whether they
"just do it this way and don't ask questions" or whether they know what they
are doing and proceed from there. You cannot be persuaded to join either
group.

I humbly and sincerely beg forgiveness from this group for my participation
in these threads. I regret all of it.

Victor Mote


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