Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019
I spent the day playing with the demo versions of XEP and Antenna House Formatter. I got both of them up and running using xsltproc and the default xsl stylesheet, with the SelfDocBook as a source xml file. Pdf from both looks good. Following DocBook XSL TCG, I was able to add a new font and enable ligatures by editing xep.xml. So XEP seems like I could make it work. Antenna House Formatter was not too bad to install, but the documentation is huge, and I have yet to figure out how to add a font or enable ligatures. I found the font-config.xml file and added a font to it, but I can't figure out how to tell the formatter to use that font. There also seems to be extensions required to enable ligatures, but I haven't figured out how to use them, either on the command line or in a configuration file. Is the AH Formatter much more complicated to use than XEP? Any kind of "newbie guide" for it? As much as I hate to flush all my dsssl-jadetex customizations, it seems like xsl-fo is going to be the way to go. From: Norm Tovey-Walsh Sent: Friday, June 11, 2021 11:00 AM To: Kevin Dunn Cc: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019 Kevin Dunn writes: > Thanks, Dave. You were helpful to me 10 years ago. The XEP PDF output > looks pretty nice with the default xsl stylesheet. There are some > fancy things I achieved with dsssl and jadetex, and I'm not sure how There’s a blast from the past! I’ve been chatting, off and on, with Peter Flynn about working on a way to use TeX as a formatting back end in the modern era. But it’s not in the top couple of reams of the todo list, at the moment. I expect the future is XML+CSS and that’s what I have in mind for the xslTNG stylesheets. It would be entirely possible, of course, to generate XSL-FO, but it feels like custom-HTML output and custom-CSS fed through Antennahouse would be the shortest path to victory. PrinceXML would also work that way. AFAIK, there are no free formatters that take HTML+CSS and produce results comparable with FOP, which surprises me. (Not that the FOP level of output would satisfy your requirements; but the lack of reasonable open source print formatters is one of the things that leads me to ponder generating LaTeX. You know, like we did in the 90’s when we were young! :-)) Be seeing you, norm -- Norman Tovey-Walsh https://nwalsh.com/ > Linux. Because rebooting is for hardware upgrades.
Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019
My toolchain is older and even more esoteric. As a longtime TeX user I ended up writing a grown-by-accretion Perl script to translate whatever subset of docbook I happen to be using into TeX/ConTeXt. I think that, since then, the ConTeXt people have added direct XML and some DocBook support to the processor. I am actually satisfied with its results, but I do not suppose it to be fit for service for anyone else's use. Still, daring or masochistic people who promise not to laugh at my Perl coding style and struggles to make ConTeXt do the right things are welcome to it. It does have the advantage of being free (if I forget the time I put into it). - To unsubscribe, e-mail: docbook-apps-unsubscr...@lists.oasis-open.org For additional commands, e-mail: docbook-apps-h...@lists.oasis-open.org
Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019
> I’ve been chatting, off and on, with Peter Flynn about working > on a way to use TeX as a formatting back end in the modern era. dblatex? https://pypi.org/project/dblatex/ http://dblatex.sourceforge.net In the period 2006 through 2016, we used dblatex with XeLaTeX a *lot*, and found it very good. It did require some tailoring for our purposes, in part because we had some additions to the DocBook schema for linguistic "stuff", and in part to convert it into the styles we were using, one of which was a style conforming to the Mouton language grammar series. Some of the tailoring was in XSLT (yuck, although I suppose your mileage may vary), and some was in LaTeX style sheets. To boast a little, one of the grammars that we typeset with DocBook + dblatex + XeLaTex is here: https://www.amazon.com/Descriptive-Grammar-Pashto-Its-Dialects/dp/B00XTAT77U/ Unfortunately, the "Look inside" view doesn't let you see our Arabic script examples (right-to-left text, of course), but trust me, they're pretty :). It looks like dblatex hasn't been updated for a few years, but in our experience it was reasonably mature. At the very least, it could provide a good starting point. On 6/11/2021 11:00 AM, Norm Tovey-Walsh wrote: Kevin Dunn writes: Thanks, Dave. You were helpful to me 10 years ago. The XEP PDF output looks pretty nice with the default xsl stylesheet. There are some fancy things I achieved with dsssl and jadetex, and I'm not sure how There’s a blast from the past! I’ve been chatting, off and on, with Peter Flynn about working on a way to use TeX as a formatting back end in the modern era. But it’s not in the top couple of reams of the todo list, at the moment. I expect the future is XML+CSS and that’s what I have in mind for the xslTNG stylesheets. It would be entirely possible, of course, to generate XSL-FO, but it feels like custom-HTML output and custom-CSS fed through Antennahouse would be the shortest path to victory. PrinceXML would also work that way. AFAIK, there are no free formatters that take HTML+CSS and produce results comparable with FOP, which surprises me. (Not that the FOP level of output would satisfy your requirements; but the lack of reasonable open source print formatters is one of the things that leads me to ponder generating LaTeX. You know, like we did in the 90’s when we were young! :-)) Be seeing you, norm -- Norman Tovey-Walsh https://nwalsh.com/ Linux. Because rebooting is for hardware upgrades. -- Mike Maxwell "Digital objects last forever--or five years, whichever comes first." --Jeff Rothenberg - To unsubscribe, e-mail: docbook-apps-unsubscr...@lists.oasis-open.org For additional commands, e-mail: docbook-apps-h...@lists.oasis-open.org
Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019
Kevin Dunn writes: > Thanks, Dave. You were helpful to me 10 years ago. The XEP PDF output > looks pretty nice with the default xsl stylesheet. There are some > fancy things I achieved with dsssl and jadetex, and I'm not sure how There’s a blast from the past! I’ve been chatting, off and on, with Peter Flynn about working on a way to use TeX as a formatting back end in the modern era. But it’s not in the top couple of reams of the todo list, at the moment. I expect the future is XML+CSS and that’s what I have in mind for the xslTNG stylesheets. It would be entirely possible, of course, to generate XSL-FO, but it feels like custom-HTML output and custom-CSS fed through Antennahouse would be the shortest path to victory. PrinceXML would also work that way. AFAIK, there are no free formatters that take HTML+CSS and produce results comparable with FOP, which surprises me. (Not that the FOP level of output would satisfy your requirements; but the lack of reasonable open source print formatters is one of the things that leads me to ponder generating LaTeX. You know, like we did in the 90’s when we were young! :-)) Be seeing you, norm -- Norman Tovey-Walsh https://nwalsh.com/ > Linux. Because rebooting is for hardware upgrades. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019
On 11/06/2021 14:53, Kevin Dunn wrote: Thanks, Dave. You were helpful to me 10 years ago. The XEP PDF output looks pretty nice with the default xsl stylesheet. There are some fancy things I achieved with dsssl and jadetex, and I'm not sure how easy they would be with an xsl-fo toolchain: 1. the Lettrine tex package did a great job producing drop caps. You can do that with AH Formatter. See https://www.antenna.co.jp/AHF/help/en/ahf-ext.html#DropCapitals and also https://www.antennahouse.com/hubfs/xsl-fo-sample/character/axf-initial-letters-1.pdf from the 'XSL-FO Samples Collection' page at https://www.antennahouse.com/xsl-fo-samples 2. I wrote custom dsssl to make xref link to page numbers, for example "These are found in Appendix A (page 127)." See http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/CustomXrefs.html 3. pdfjadetex produces nice ligatures, including, for example, ffi. Using the default xsl stylesheet, fop doesn't do any ligatures, and xep does fi, but not ffi. Maybe it depends on the font? It depends on both the font and the formatter, but I would expect that every formatter can use ligatures if they are in the font. (Some will also let you disable ligatures, but that is the opposite of what you say you want.) 4. The titlepage used a custom graphic for the title, rather than rendering it in a font. The DocBook XSLT 1.0 stylesheets have a template mechanism where you define a lot about the titles and the templating (for want of a better word) stylesheet generates the XSLT to make it work. See http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/HTMLTitlePage.html. My recent attempt to explain it is at https://markupuk.org/webhelp/index.html#ar10s04s01.html I'm willing to learn xsl-fo, and I'm willing to spend hundreds, but not thousands of dollars on commercial tools. I've tried xsltproc-fop and xsltproc-xep. Are there other combinations for less than a thousand dollars? The 'Lite' version of the 'Standalone' (single end user) AH XSL Formatter is USD 400. The not so good news is that 'Lite' means that it doesn't implement all of the AH Formatter extensions, and drop caps require the 'Standard' version, which is USD 1,250. See https://www.antennahouse.com/pricing Regards, Tony Graham. -- Senior Architect XML Division Antenna House, Inc. Skerries, Ireland tgra...@antenna.co.jp - To unsubscribe, e-mail: docbook-apps-unsubscr...@lists.oasis-open.org For additional commands, e-mail: docbook-apps-h...@lists.oasis-open.org
Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019
On Fri, 11 Jun 2021 at 14:53, Kevin Dunn wrote: > > Thanks, Dave. You were helpful to me 10 years ago. The XEP PDF output looks > pretty nice with the default xsl stylesheet. There are some fancy things I > achieved with dsssl and jadetex, and I'm not sure how easy they would be with > an xsl-fo toolchain: > > the Lettrine tex package did a great job producing drop caps. Nope. Do you really need them? > I wrote custom dsssl to make xref link to page numbers, for example "These > are found in Appendix A (page 127)." Can do, xslt to produce links in xsl-fo, will product PDF links. > pdfjadetex produces nice ligatures, including, for example, ffi. Using the > default xsl stylesheet, fop doesn't do any ligatures, and xep does fi, but > not ffi. Maybe it depends on the font? Could be, I don't know. Again, essential? > The titlepage used a custom graphic for the title, rather than rendering it > in a font. Can do. In the xslt to xsl-fo layer. > > I'm willing to learn xsl-fo, and I'm willing to spend hundreds, but not > thousands of dollars on commercial tools. I've tried xsltproc-fop and > xsltproc-xep. Are there other combinations for less than a thousand dollars? Yes. Antenna house. Expensive, but (IMHO) the best today. HTH > > > > From: Dave Pawson > Sent: Friday, June 11, 2021 3:49:18 AM > To: Kevin Dunn > Cc: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org > Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive > 2019 > > My view, a 12 yo tool chain is plain OOD? > > How much work did you put in to the stylesheets? > Is the up to date XSL too far from what you can manage with? > > regards > -- > Dave Pawson > XSLT XSL-FO FAQ. > Docbook FAQ. -- Dave Pawson XSLT XSL-FO FAQ. Docbook FAQ. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: docbook-apps-unsubscr...@lists.oasis-open.org For additional commands, e-mail: docbook-apps-h...@lists.oasis-open.org
Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019
Thanks, Dave. You were helpful to me 10 years ago. The XEP PDF output looks pretty nice with the default xsl stylesheet. There are some fancy things I achieved with dsssl and jadetex, and I'm not sure how easy they would be with an xsl-fo toolchain: 1. the Lettrine tex package did a great job producing drop caps. 2. I wrote custom dsssl to make xref link to page numbers, for example "These are found in Appendix A (page 127)." 3. pdfjadetex produces nice ligatures, including, for example, ffi. Using the default xsl stylesheet, fop doesn't do any ligatures, and xep does fi, but not ffi. Maybe it depends on the font? 4. The titlepage used a custom graphic for the title, rather than rendering it in a font. I'm willing to learn xsl-fo, and I'm willing to spend hundreds, but not thousands of dollars on commercial tools. I've tried xsltproc-fop and xsltproc-xep. Are there other combinations for less than a thousand dollars? From: Dave Pawson Sent: Friday, June 11, 2021 3:49:18 AM To: Kevin Dunn Cc: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019 My view, a 12 yo tool chain is plain OOD? How much work did you put in to the stylesheets? Is the up to date XSL too far from what you can manage with? regards -- Dave Pawson XSLT XSL-FO FAQ. Docbook FAQ.
Re: [docbook-apps] Two nagging problems with docbook2pdf in texlive 2019
My view, a 12 yo tool chain is plain OOD? How much work did you put in to the stylesheets? Is the up to date XSL too far from what you can manage with? regards On Fri, 11 Jun 2021 at 03:46, Kevin Dunn wrote: > > For context, I have published two books marked up in Docbook xml, the first > in 2003, and the second in 2010. Both were converted to pdf using docbook2pdf > on linux boxes using customized dsssl stylesheets and several tex packages. > > In anticipation of writing a third book, I installed texlive on a Ubuntu > 20.04 box, and was pleased to find the familiar tools and packages there. I > copied my 2010 book over from the very old computer where it was living, and > with a few tweaks, I can get it to process (mostly) with my previous > stylesheets. However, there are two nagging problems with the docbook2pdf > included with texlive: > > The book has several Parts. docbook2pdf paginates Part 1 with roman page > numbers. Chapter 1 starts on page 1. I would like Part 1 to start on page 1 > (as it did with the 2009 toolchain). > The book has Figures, Examples, Tables, and Equations. My dsssl stylesheet > uses $generate-book-lot-list$ to list those elements that should get their > own list after the table of contents. But only the first one in the list > actually shows up in the pdf, for example List of Tables but nothing for > figures or equations, even though they are included in > $generate-book-lot-list$ > > In troubleshooting this, I found that the same things happen with a very > simple book.xml file and no customization in the dsssl stylesheets, i.e., > docobook2pdf book.xml using the default stylesheet. > > I realize this toolchain is very old, but I would really like to get it > working again. I have looked at other toolchains: > > dblatex places Part 1 on page 1, but only gives a List of Tables. > xsltproc and fop give correct page numbers and Lists, but I'd be starting > over with xsl as far as stylesheet customizations. > xsltproc and xep (free trial) also get the page numbers and Lists correct, > but again, I'd be starting over on my stylesheets. > > Any suggestions on fixing these issues? > Thanks in advance, > Kevin Dunn -- Dave Pawson XSLT XSL-FO FAQ. Docbook FAQ. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: docbook-apps-unsubscr...@lists.oasis-open.org For additional commands, e-mail: docbook-apps-h...@lists.oasis-open.org
