Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: About DB2LaTeX
Ramon Casellas [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Many of the comments and bug reports I receive about DB2LaTeX concern the escaping of characters as well as internationalization. I'm thinking about how I could improve the package, and using external modules with java and/or C++ is an option. However, dropping the XSL only approach may mean compatibility problems, and that some XSL processors are supported and others aren't. So my questions are: - Should I add extension modules in order to make DB2LaTeX to make it perform better and faster? FWIW, I'd vote for keeping the XSL only approach. I think there's a big value in it -- in enabling people to get transformations done with just a minimal system (just the stylesheets and an XSLT engine) that will work on any platform and is free from other dependencies. (I realize DB2LaTeX has the big dependency of requiring users to have a working TeX setup if they want to be able to do anything with the generated LaTeX it produces, but that's a different sort of thing.) Just as an example: I don't think that because Steve Cheng's docbook2x utilities (for converting DocBook to roff man pages and Texinfo) have Perl/module dependencies, they're not as widely used as they ought to be. I guess a lot of users just can't/don't want to deal with getting the extra dependencies installed and working in order to use it. Martijn van Beers has been developing a pure XSLT-based DocBook-to-man solution that I expect will end up being used by a lot more people. [...] - Should I focus in providing support for the 1 or 2 most widely used XSLT processors in benefit of the number of features supported? [...] You might want to aim just for xsltproc and Saxon. If you can judge by postings to docbook-apps, xsltproc and Saxon are the engines most DocBook users are using; other than those and Xalan, XT, and 4XSLT, I can't think offhand of mention of any other engines showing up much on docbook-apps. As far as the other engines go, the current versions of the DocBook XSL stylesheets don't work reliably with Xalan (because of bugs in Xalan, I think, not bugs in the stylesheets), XT isn't supported because it can't handle keys, and 4XSLT works with the stylesheets (I think) but doesn't seem to be nearly as widely used by DocBook users (for now, at least) as xsltproc and Saxon. HTH, --Mike
Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: About DB2LaTeX
On Thu, 6 Jun 2002, Michael Smith wrote: Ramon Casellas [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [snip] - Should I add extension modules in order to make DB2LaTeX to make it perform better and faster? FWIW, I'd vote for keeping the XSL only approach. I think there's a big value in it -- in enabling people to get transformations done with just a minimal system (just the stylesheets and an XSLT engine) that will work on any platform and is free from other dependencies. I agree, but I would like to ask one question about XSLT stylesheets. How to translate docbook's amp; to LaTeX's \ using XSLT only? [snip] - Should I focus in providing support for the 1 or 2 most widely used XSLT processors in benefit of the number of features supported? [...] You might want to aim just for xsltproc and Saxon. If you can judge by postings to docbook-apps, xsltproc and Saxon are the engines most DocBook users are using; other than those and Xalan, XT, and 4XSLT, I can't think offhand of mention of any other engines showing up much on docbook-apps. I would like to see all the stylesheets working with Sablotron (http://www.gingerall.com). It is very, very fast and the PHP XSLT functions are based on this engine. Regards, Andrzej -- http://kokosz.horyzont.net http://www.earthdawn.pl
Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: About DB2LaTeX
Ramon Casellas wrote: Many of the comments and bug reports I receive about DB2LaTeX concern the escaping of characters as well as internationalization. I'm thinking about how I could improve the package, and using external modules with java and/or C++ is an option. However, dropping the XSL only approach may mean compatibility problems, and that some XSL processors are supported and others aren't. So my questions are: - Should I add extension modules in order to make DB2LaTeX to make it perform better and faster? I think that speed is not an big issue and using external modules wouldn't increase speed significantly. All problems of current DB2LaTeX could be solved in pure portable XSLT. In general terms, I would be against the inclusion of external modules. However, some things require ugly hacks and some people have suggested using add-ons for these. There are my suggestions to most common problems: Escaping of characters -- this can be done by table (stored as XML fragment directly in stylesheet) with replacement rules. This will be easier to customize and there won't be need for very deep and recursive scape template. Internationalizations issues -- for different languages Latex needs quite different preambles. This preamble (or it's parts) can be stored as localization text and be independant for each language. Jirka -- - Jirka Kosek e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kosek.cz
