Re: FOP source code ambigous

2001-05-31 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

 in other words I didn't find a file containing : package
 org.apache.fop.fo.properties

I don't know the exact details, but the source code for 
org.apache.fop.fo.properties is generated from XML and (I think) XSL files 
during the build.

You can find the exact mechanism by studying the build.xml file used by ant 
during the build process.

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Re: Conversion RTF to FO

2001-05-31 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

 I 'd like to convert a .RTF file to .FO file.
 Is there a program doing  it ?

There are a few programs called rtf2xml on the web (see 
http://www.google.com/search?q=rtf2xml), but I didn't test any of them yet.

It might be your first step: convert RTF to XML, then use XSL to generate 
XSL:FO.

You could also use upCast (commercial product, http://www.infinity-loop.de/) 
for the RTF-to-XML conversion step, it does a job of making sense out of RTF.

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RTF backend status (was: where is fop.jar?)

2001-06-08 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

 What happened to the rtf backend which Mr Bertarnd submitted? 

Actually I didn't submit the RTF backend yet, only made it available as a 
hacked version of fop on our own CVS server 
(:pserver:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/usr/local/cvsroot, password is 
anoncvs, module name is xml-fop, cvsweb at 
http://codeconsult.dsvr.co.uk/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi). 

It's not there yet RTF-wise, and I realized this week that the code 
has major flaws which would need too much messy code to be added for it to be 
usable. So I don't feel good about submitting this version which 
I hope to replace with very different (better :-) code in a short while.

I'm currently working on redesign it, but as for others it's not a full-time 
job, so I can't really give a release date. My plan now is to redesign, get 
the basics working with the new structure and then submit it for inclusion in 
fop.

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(jfor) how to define XSL-FO extensions a la fox:outline

2001-08-29 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

In the jfor project (XSL-FO to RTF converter) we'd like to define extensions 
to XSL-FO for RTF-specific constructs (RTF styles in this case).

Could someone from the FOP team check that the proposal below is ok with FOP?
Ideally, our jfor: extensions should be completely ignored by FOP, while our 
output stays as much FOP-like as possible when jfor: extensions are not used.

jfor stylesheets extension proposal (example/excerpts):
fo:root
  xmlns:fo=http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format;
  xmlns:jfor=http://www.jfor.org/xmlns/2001/stylesheet;


!-- this generates an RTF stylesheet --
jfor:stylesheet
  jfor:style name=sourceCode font-size=10pt font-family=Courier/
  !-- more RTF styles here --   
/jfor:stylesheet

fo:flow
  fo:block jfor-class=sourceCode
in RTF, this block will have the sourceCode style.
  /fo:block
/fo:flow

Shouldn't the jfor-class attribute also be made part of the jfor namespace?
like fo:block jfor:jfor-class=sourceCode

Thanks for having a look at this!

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Re: Performance and java 1.1

2001-09-21 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

 So the question is: can we drop java 1.1 support and use better data
 structures?

+1 for this:

-even switching to a 1.2 JVM (+hotspot) without code changes often brings big 
performance improvements compared to 1.1, so IMHO forcing users to 1.2 is a 
good thing for FOP in general

-the perspective of 60% performance improvements is certainly enticing...

 -- Bertrand Delacrétaz, www.codeconsult.ch
 -- web technologies consultant - OO, Java, XML, C++

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Re: Will there be a RTF renderer?

2001-09-24 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Monday 24 September 2001 12:18, Beer, Christian wrote:
 Will there be a RTF renderer in the near future? 

We (my company, I'm not speaking for the FOP team) have been working on an 
RTF renderer earlier this year, and later scrapped it for a standalone 
implementation known as jfor that is released under the MPL 
license.

So currently AFAIK there is no RTF renderer for FOP, but jfor will allow you 
to convert XSL-FO documents to RTF.

You can find more info at www.jfor.org.

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Re: [vote] Merging JFor with FOP (jfor speed/presentation)

2001-10-18 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 18 October 2001 23:06, Art Welch wrote:
snip
 My concerns are that if jfor excels at speed at the expense of
 presentation.

   1. Are jfor users going to be happy with jfor integrated with FOP
 which seems to favor presentation over speed?

   2. Would FOP users be happy with the RTF generated if it loses
 presentation information?
snip

Thanks for putting this up - the thing with RTF is that there is a fairly 
strong similarity between XSL-FO and RTF constructs, that does not need any 
layout work in the FO-RTF transformation (we had a good discussion about 
this earlier this year on this list). 
The layout is done later by the wordprocessor when the RTF file is opened.

Hence jfor being called an XSL-FO to RTF *converter* and not *formatter*.
jfor does a fairly simple mapping of XSL-FO elements to RTF constructs, hence 
the speed and small code size. 

So, technically I think the initial merging might see jfor sharing only some 
infrastructure with FOP (command-line and Cocoon invocation mechanisms, 
configuration, logging, parser, etc.), with a -rtf option that would more 
or less switch between jfor and FOP for processing of the XSL-FO elements. 
This is of course going to be discussed with the FOP community, I'm only 
thinking outloud here.

As Stefano rightly mentioned in the private discussion that lead to this 
merging proposal, such a side-by-side merging would already be a big 
advantage for *users* of FOP who would get RTF output for free, without 
needing separate downloads and configuration. Not to mention increased 
visibility for both projects.

Later on, we will have to refactor the jfor code to use more of the the FOP 
codebase where it makes sense. This might lead to new interfaces between FOP 
and its renderers (post-processors?), where a renderer could be plugged in at 
an earlier stage of the FOP formatting chain, not necessarily after the 
layout stage.

So, IMHO jfor would not be a FOP renderer per se initially, but might become 
one later in the integration process.

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Re: Merging jfor into FOP - what's the plan?

2001-11-24 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Friday 23 November 2001 20:13, Art Welch wrote:
. . .
 Would it be possible to have one RTFRenderer
 and then have an option use either the full FOP layout or bypass the FOP
 layout for quick RTF?. . .

I don't know about using the full FOP layout - last time I tried (beginning 
of this year) it looked hard - my understanding is that the Renderers receive 
graphical area events from FOP, whereas jfor works more at the document 
elements level.

But I don't know much about what's currently going on about the layout 
mechanism - maybe it would be easier now.

- Bertrand

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Re: Merging jfor into FOP - what's the plan?

2001-11-26 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hi Keiron,

If there is not going to be a FOP release in the next few weeks, I 
agree that a minimal integration does not make sense.

Currently the jfor conversion is driven directly from SAX events, so the 
first thing that comes to mind is driving it from the FO tree.

You're right that, contrary to print renderers, the RTF one will need to know 
about the structure of the original document.

Does the FO tree handle things like attribute inheritance (i.e. a block 
inherits the font definition from an ancestor block), or is this handled 
while doing the layout? Such inheritance is currently missing in jfor.

To summarize:
-jfor needs to know about the original document structure: speaks for option 
(A), plugging jfor right after the FO tree stage if I understand well.

-BUT jfor could probably benefit from some operations done at the layout 
stage (attributes inheritance, others?) : speaks for option (B), extending 
the renderer interface to let the renderers know (cleanly) about the original 
document structure.

If you can give me some pointers about where to look at in the code to 
evaluate (A) and (B), I'll have a look.

- Bertrand

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Re: Merging jfor into FOP - what's the plan?

2001-11-27 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hi Arved,

 What are your recommendations for someone to come up to speed with RTF?

I'd recommend to stay away from it unless you really have to ;-)
Seriously, to someone accustomed to clear and well-defined specs, RTF is 
somewhat messy, what it is really is a documented internal format, not a spec 
that has been agreed upon by a carefully-selected comittee.

The RTF spec that we use in jfor is (mostly) V1.5 from Microsoft, who since 
moved on to 1.6 (at least), but apparently 1.5 is the most widely supported 
spec. A google search shows it at http://www.dubois.ws/software/RTF, it might 
be harder to find at Microsoft as it's not the latest.

The rtflib package of jfor (available at www.jfor.org) encapsulates our 
knowledge of RTF and is fairly simple and understandable, but it is still too 
much element-oriented.
One important thing to realize (happened too late here) is that RTF is 
more flow-based or stack-based than element-based: not everything that is 
opened has to be closed, it's more like a flow with embedded attribute 
changes.

 As I understand it, RTF is presented
 to a user-agent which does a fair amount of layout; higher-level structures
 are still present in the RTF. 

Right - but there are both structure and presentations codes, so an RTF 
document could be both. 
Jfor has a strong bend towards structure, as usually the user goal is to get 
an editable RTF document, where as much of the original document structure 
must be preserved for convenience. 
Precise appearance usually comes second, as applying a new wordprocessor 
style sheet can change a lot of it.

RTF is both a presentation and a structure format, along with a moving target 
due to the spec being expanded and rewritten with nearly every new version 
of winword. 
There are a many grey areas in the spec, meaning the only possible test is 
opening the generated RTF in the desired wordprocessors (and often watching 
it crash...).

 snip
 This is not so different from MIF
Agreed. We are working with MIF for another project, and didn't choose FOP 
for that because of lack of precise control over the MIF output.

I tend to see these formats as:
-PDF for finished high-quality output (presentation language), layout 100% 
done by FOP

-MIF for semi-finished high-quality output (typography language), layout 
done by Framemaker according to MIF instructions.

-RTF for editable structure + presentation output (wordprocessing 
language), layout done by wordprocessor.

So I fully agree that MIF and RTF renderers share a lot in common - 
they must be able to get as much information as possible about the original 
document structure, and in my view do not need any layout computations.

 In a sense with RTF and MIF (and HTML for anyone who really desperately
 wants to see FO-HTML) we are talking about translators as opposed to
 formatters and renderers...

yes - that's why I called jfor a converter instead of formatter

Without knowing too much about FOP internals, I think a processing chain 
along these lines might help:

parsing if needed
- SAX events
- FO attributes processing (validation, inheritance) 
- StructureRenderer

StructureRenderer is
EITHER Layout + PrintRenderer
OR StructureProcessor (RTF, MIF, etc.)

What we need to find out is how much the existing FOP and these structure 
renderers have in common.

- Bertrand

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Re: Servlet called twice

2001-10-09 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Tuesday 09 October 2001 10:52, Kuehnberger wrote:
 my servlet is still called twice when the output is pdf,

Are you using Internet Explorer as a client?
If yes, this is a known problem: IE often does additional requests for 
non-HTML files. AFAIK this is hard, if not impossible, to solve on the server 
side.

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Re: Fop speed improvements

2001-10-11 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 11 October 2001 20:05, Scott Moore wrote:
 I generated a 100 page PDF in about 20 seconds

Would you mind sharing the XSL-FO of this document?
We are currently studying how far optimizing FO code (just on one example 
document that we know is less than optimal) makes a difference, and I'd be 
interested in comparing your FO constructs.

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Re: Making a native win32 binary out of FOP

2001-10-12 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Wednesday 10 October 2001 10:19, Thomas Kæregaard wrote:
 I would like to distribute FOP with my application, but I don't want to
 force people to install 5,4 MB worth of JRE.

Most likely you *will* have to distribute the JRE (unless you find a 
compatible java-to-exe compiler?).

You might not need to *install* the JRE, though. Recent experiments here have 
shown that merely *copying* an installed JRE directory to another system works, as 
long as you're careful 
with PATH and the like to make sure that the desired version of the JRE is 
started. 
I don't know if this is official but it works fine.

Starting java classes from an EXE is possible using JNI (the java native 
interface), this is done for example by the javaserv utility, see 
http://www.kcmultimedia.com/javaserv.

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Re: [ANN] XSLfast: Authoring tool for XSL-FO

2001-10-13 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Friday 12 October 2001 23:14, Stephan Albers wrote:
 after a long development period, we have finaly released the very first
 version of XSLfast for public review and test.

Interesting, thanks for the info!
How is XSLfast licensed? Open Source? Commercial?

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Re: Merging jfor into FOP - what's the plan?

2001-11-30 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 29 November 2001 12:44, Keiron Liddle wrote:
 So are things like static areas, markers, page numbers etc. possible with
 rtf or are these type of things simply not possible.

Keiron,

as far as I know, RTF does support the following (but jfor currently not for 
most of these things) - In parentheses, my understanding of these concepts, 
to make sure we're on the same wavelength:

static areas - yes (headers and footers)
markers - yes (references like see page N)
page numbers - yes (dynamic auto-numbering)

But things like page numbers must be left to RTF to compute, FOP will need to 
include an *RTF code* to let the RTF reader compute page numbers, not compute 
them by itself.

- Bertrand

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Re: Maintanance release (was: FOP conformance)

2001-12-03 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Monday 03 December 2001 12:19, Christian Geisert wrote:
 What about jfor ?
 I think it would be a good idea to add it with user-level integration as
 proposed by Betrand.

Depends on schedule - I'm very busy for the next two weeks, it would be hard 
for me to find time to do the code moving and integration,

- Bertrand

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Re: whats FOP

2001-12-07 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Friday 07 December 2001 12:55, Suhail Rashid wrote:
 What does FOP stand for ;
Formatting Objects Processor

- Bertrand

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Re: FOP performance on Win98/JRE 1.3.1

2001-12-12 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Wednesday 12 December 2001 12:24, Lukas Pietsch wrote:
 What's still slow is the preceding docbook-to-.fo conversion. 

One thing I've seen is document referring to a DTD using an http:// URL.

This is ok, but usually the parser will go out to the Internet to fetch the 
DTD, which can slow down the process noticeably.

I'd suggest checking your documents or remove any DOCTYPE declarations to see 
if it makes a difference.

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Re: FOP performance on Win98/JRE 1.3.1

2001-12-12 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Wednesday 12 December 2001 14:42, Cyril Rognon wrote:
 before making any modification to your docbook stylesheet, I suggest you
 simply use some XML parser feature to deactivate the DTD validation and DTD
 loading. 

Yes, of course to actually solve the problem (assuming DTD fetching *is* the 
problem), I agree.

But for a quick test, trying to find out if DTD fetching is the problem, I'd 
rather take out the DOCTYPE from a test document - quicker and I wouldn't 
have to mess with configuration settings.

- Bertrand

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Re: Basic aspects (big fat list vs. live test documents)

2001-12-13 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 13 December 2001 15:35, Matthias Fischer wrote:
 . . .
 My whish to Santa Clause this year: A big fat list containing all major
 graphic formats and the FO/FOP-related aspects that concern them. 
 . . .

I'm skeptical: to me big fat list means big maintenance work and usually 
out-of-sync list.

I'd rather have many small, focused, self-documented, numbered XSL-FO example 
files that show what works and what doesn't in FOP (note that I haven't 
looked at our test files for a while - maybe it's there already?).  

Maybe a live FOP system where users can post a ZIP containing XSL:FO + 
graphics files and get back the PDF?
(got to tell Santa Claus about this one ;-)

Such examples could be donated by users after they find that a particular 
feature works or not, with a standard mail header ([TESTDOC] ?) that would 
help committers sort out these files.

Any thoughts?

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Re: Basic aspects (big fat list vs. live test documents)

2001-12-14 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Friday 14 December 2001 10:05, Matthias Fischer wrote:
 However, you won't escape big maintenance so easily: 

Right - maintaining such a test suite is not light work.

The advantage over pure documentation, however, is that both users and 
developers directly benefit from having strong test documents.

So I think it would be easier to get the FOP community to work on building 
such a test suite (or organize/document existing tests) than finding someone 
to write and maintain documentation.

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Re: Basic aspects (big fat list vs. live test documents)

2001-12-17 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Monday 17 December 2001 09:07, Matthias Fischer wrote:
 What are _your_ plans with regard to the material offered by W3C/Carmelo?
As mentioned by Keiron (see http://xml.apache.org/fop/testing.html), the 
current FOP tests are based on automatically comparing the ouput 
of two FOP revisions.

This is needed to make sure new releases don't break existing features, but 
IMHO doesn't make it easy for end users to find out exactly how FOP 
interprets specific features.

Again, I think what would help end-users a lot (and also have good tutorial 
value) would be small self-describing XSL-FO documents where one can check 
the results by reading the PDF, along with an official list of which 
samples work and which don't.

Nice and well, but I don't think anyone on the FOP team currently has time to 
fully set this up (but I'd be happy to be proven wrong!). 

There are quite a lot of FOP samples already 
(http://xml.apache.org/fop/examples.html), some more useful than others, so 
maybe it's just a case of sorting through the samples, classifying them and 
making them easily accessible, ideally using a live Internet-accessible FOP 
setup.

In the meantime, I'd encourage users that find a bug or problem to send to 
this list the smallest possible XSL-FO document that demonstrates the 
problem. We could start collecting these in the hope of setting up a 
user-friendly demo/test suite when someone finds time to do it.

- Bertrand

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Re: Basic aspects (big fat list vs. live test documents)

2001-12-18 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Tuesday 18 December 2001 09:59, Matthias Fischer wrote:
 Right now, I have a pice of code I would contribute. It would be useful, if
 there were an alternative e-mail address to that of the list, to collect
 the submitted code segments. 

ok, right now we don't have an alternative address available. 
I suggest that you post your code to the list, inline (not as an attachment) 
with [TESTDOC] in the subject line (I hope I'm not breaking an existing 
convention here).

We can then find it easily in the mailing list archives.

- Bertrand




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Re: Properties documentation

2001-12-29 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Saturday 29 December 2001 02:57, Peter B. West wrote:
. . .let me know if there is some easy way to get full
 conformance with the Apache XML norm, or if there are severe problems
 viewing these pages with modern browsers.

Hi Peter,
FYI, with Konqueror (modern yes, 100% finished maybe not), the PNG images 
(like in PropertyConsts.html) aren't displayed, but right-clicking them allow 
them to be opened in the image viewer. Maybe a mime-type problem?

The pages look fine with IE5.

- Bertrand


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Re: Seeking Comments on Status of Project (jfor integration)

2002-01-24 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

(cc to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - fyi)

On Friday 25 January 2002 00:12, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 . . .
 I see some notes about the inclusion of jfor (RTF output) into the FOP
 project.  I think that would be really cool, and speaks very well of the
 effort put in thus far. Anyone care to comment on when that may make it
 into a release?

I'm progressing very slowly for the integration of jfor, been talking (mostly 
with Keiron) about design issues. Proper jfor integration requires new 
interfaces to FOP, which is being partially redesigned at the same time, so 
it is a bit hard if we want to get it right.

On the other hands, resources are scarce - I'm currently busy with other 
projects, and no one is currently actively working on jfor (although I 
understand it is in active use out there).

So I cannot really commit to a timeframe for the jfor integration - if 
someone needs it quickly and is able to commit resources, I'd be more than 
happy to help (coaching etc.).

-- 
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 -- jfor.org lead developer

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Re: Seeking Comments on Status of Project (testing)

2002-01-24 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Friday 25 January 2002 00:12, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 . . .
 I am involved with the approval process for bringing new technology into
 our company.  We have several development groups who have seen the FOP
 engine and would like to include it their applications. 
 . . .
 One of our primary tenets is no beta software should be included in
 production applications.
 . . .

Depending on the costs your company would incur if going for a commercial 
solution, wouldn't it be cheaper to contribute some resources to the FOP 
project for testing?

There have been some testing efforts in the past year, but IMHO having 
someone come from the outside and design or complete conformance + stability 
tests would be a great contribution to the project.

As Arved indicated, although FOP has known limitations it is fairly usable 
for a lot of applications today. Being able to measure this usability would 
be great!

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refocusing fop-dev and fop-user?

2002-01-24 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

I see a lot of posts going to fop-dev that really belong to the fop-user 
mailing list. 

Should we do something about it (I'd like to)?

If yes how best to do it - polite please ask there messages, having the 
list moderated for a while, ?

- Bertrand

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Re: refocusing fop-dev and fop-user?

2002-01-25 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Friday 25 January 2002 10:26, Jens von Pilgrim wrote:
. . .
 On http://xml.apache.org/mail.html is only the fop-dev listed - is there
 also a user list?

This is probably the cause - AFAIK fop-user is alive and kicking, just not 
listed in the proper places.

Can anyone clarify the situation and/or make sure fop-user is listed in the 
right places?

- Bertrand

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Re: AW: keep-with-next?

2002-01-31 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

(by the way your message was crossposted to fop-user, please avoid this as it 
makes it very hard to follow discussions)

On Wednesday 30 January 2002 20:21, David Wood wrote:
 I am a Java coder and know my way around the standard. I volunteer to try
 to fix this, if someone who is more familiar with FOP's internals can
 tell me where to look...

I cannot help you much, but here's at least a reply to your offer ;-)

AFAIK getting keep-with... stuff to work requires serious redesign, which is 
currently going on (Keiron and Karen?), but apparently fairly slowly.

Keiron would probably be the one to answer you, but in his last message 
(Jan.14th I think) he indicated that he'd be away for some time. I have no 
idea when he will be back, maybe someone knows more?

-- 
 -- Bertrand Delacrétaz, www.codeconsult.ch
 -- web technologies consultant - OO, Java, XML, C++






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Re: Seeking Comments on Status of Project

2002-02-05 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Tuesday 05 February 2002 23:25, Peter B. West wrote:
. . .
 I think that most people need some encouragement to take the 
 plunge in murky waters.

I agree, make sense with the various offers for help that came up in 
the last few weeks.

- Bertrand

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Re: Seeking Comments on Status of Project

2002-02-06 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 07 February 2002 03:57, Arved Sandstrom wrote:
. . .
 If you do some code and want to
 see it added to the main or maintenance branches, then the onus is on
 one or more committers to explain why it's a bad idea, but there must
 be a good reason. 
. . .

To make sure there is no confusion about this, could someone clarify 
(once more I guess) what exactly the main and maintenance branches 
are, and how to get the source code for both of them?

- Bertrand

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Re: StructureEvents concept

2002-02-10 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 07 February 2002 12:15, Keiron Liddle wrote:
. . .
 Do we need to have this completely separate method of reading the fo
 tree (layout managers is the other) when both do some similar things.
 I'm not sure, I just can't picture how it should work at the moment.


Right - let me try to reformulate what we need to be able to create an 
RTF document. If this is already covered by the current layout manager 
interface, then it's fine.

 We need:
 - start and end of document
yes

 - start and end of page sequence
yes (mapped to an RTF document section)

 - resolved properties
yes

 - static areas
yes, for RTF they should at best come right after the start of the page 
sequence

 - add info after end of block level object: block, table, list etc.
yes, for RTF we need both start and end events for most such 
constructs: table cells, list items, etc. 

So I think what you suggest maps well with the requirements of an RTF 
render (or other structure-based renderers). 

Where should I look in the current code to start playing with this? 
layoutmgr package?

- Bertrand

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Re: StructureEvents concept

2002-02-10 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Friday 08 February 2002 01:58, Peter B. West wrote:
 Bernard,
(That's Bertrand by the way ;-)

 What sort of structure does rtf exhibit?  Is it a page-based
 structure, or is it divided, like xslfo, into page definitions and
 flows?  This is a critical difference as far as the design goes. 
 From what you say below, it seems to rely on a flow-based model.

In the sense of not being mapped to printed pages directly (unless hard 
page-breaks are used), RTF is flow-based, not page-based.

An RTF document is broken out in sections which are very similar to 
page-sequences in concept. The pagination is done by the RTF reader 
(usually a word processor) when it renders the document to screen or 
print.

Constructs like tables, lists etc. are flow-based but need to be 
closed, kind of like the nested elements of an XML document.

I think RTF maps well to XSL-FO documents in terms of structure. What 
has been hard in our past efforts to write an RTF renderer was that FOP 
didn't provide end events (or we didn't find out how it did) for 
tables, lists and other elements, for which the RTF render needs to 
generate element-closing codes.

- Bertrand

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Re: XML Parsing [2] (RTF document header)

2002-02-11 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Monday 11 February 2002 10:19, Keiron Liddle wrote:
. . .
 At the end of a page sequence we know that all pages in the page 
 sequence can be rendered without being effected by any further XML. 

Note that this won't be the case with RTF: AFAIK an RTF document has to 
contain a document header with font tables, tables of list formats 
etc. This header has to come at the beginning of the document but most 
of the information (notably information about list formats) it contains 
won't be available until much later in the document.

This is a problem if we want to generate RTF on the fly, and we don't 
have a solution for this in jfor yet, we just keep the RTF document in 
memory until it is complete. 

- Bertrand

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Re: Tool to create XSL:FO without stylesheet from Java?

2002-02-15 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Friday 15 February 2002 15:47, Roland wrote:
 does anyone have a good tool to create an XSL:FO file without the use
 of a stylesheet?

You might want to look at jdom (www.jdom.org), a very nice DOM 
manipulation library for java.

Saxon (http://users.iclway.co.uk/mhkay/saxon) is also a good choice for 
this.

And if you do a search on google with jdom saxon xml you'll find a 
few more such libraries.

 The reason I want to do this is because I think XSLT is 
 very complicated.

IMHO XSLT is worth learning - the combination of XSLT with java is 
killer for working with XML.

-- 
 -- Bertrand Delacrétaz, www.codeconsult.ch
 -- web technologies consultant - OO, Java, XML, C++






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Re: Integrating Tree into FO tree handling

2002-02-17 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Sunday 17 February 2002 06:07, Peter B. West wrote:
. . .
 FOTree maintains the property stacks with the initial value, current
 value and history of the properties being defined on elements of the
 FO Tree.  It also implements Runnable, and its run() method is the
 source of the FoTreeBuilder thread.  On construction, it is given a
 SyncedCircularBuffer by means of which it receives event notification
 from the parser.
. . .

Would this SyncedCircularBuffer help in propagating the events 
downstream from FoTreeBuilder to StructureRenderers? Or is is already 
implemented so in some experimental branch of the code?

-Bertrand

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Re: remove html-docs dir?

2002-02-18 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Monday 18 February 2002 10:54, Keiron Liddle wrote:
 Can I remove everything under docs/html-docs.

+1 because

 it will force the builds to have up to date information 

-Bertrand

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Re: [PROPOSAL] FOP+iText = FOP-NG -next generation-

2002-03-13 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Wednesday 13 March 2002 16:58, Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:
. . .
 -
  FOP uses iText as a PDF generation library
 -
. . .

Maybe the following scenario could help making FOP more 
pipeline-oriented, making it easier to plug in various renderers, 
layout engines, debugging tools, etc.

I'm just making up component names, hopefully understandable

1. FopParser parses and validates the input XSL-FO document
2. FopPropertyResolver does its job, attributes inheritance, etc.

Then two options:
3a. FopLayoutEngine (existing code, API-coupled as now) computes layout 
and produces PDF 

3b. *or* FopFoDumper dumps the result in XML (or SAX events) using the 
XSL-FO vocabulary but with all attributes explicity specified (as far 
as possible, I know there are some issues here).

After 3b, various XSLT transforms and/or XML-to-something converters 
can be plugged in using the well-defined and loosely-coupled SAX/XML 
interface.

I think using XML/SAX to interface between future pipeline components 
(ParsingAndPropertyResolving - Layout - Serialization) opens up much 
more options than using java APIs for this, and could help keep FOP 
small and focused.

If using Cocoon, being able to just resolve properties and pass the 
result on to various transforms opens up new horizons for XSL-FO 
processing. 

At the other end of the pipeline, what about an XML-to-MIF 
converter, for example, much more generally useful than a 
tightly-coupled MIF renderer for FOP. 

Implementing 3b should be fairly easy (isn't that a serialization of 
the FOTree?), and we can go from here to reuse important parts of FOP 
as individual components.

How does this sound?

-- 
 Bertrand Delacrétaz (codeconsult.ch, jfor.org)

 buzzwords: XML, java, XSLT, cocoon, mentoring/teaching/coding.
 disclaimer: eternity is very long. mostly towards the end. get ready.






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Re: [PROPOSAL] FOP+iText = FOP-NG -next generation-

2002-03-14 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 14 March 2002 09:00, Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:
. . .
  1. FopParser parses and validates the input XSL-FO document
 Not needed if using Cocoon as a pipeline.
. . .

Right, but it's so easy that we might as well keep it for easier 
testing.

. . .
 What I would like to see, is that FOP stops discussing about the
 logging, resolving, pipelineing and stuff and starts to focus on the
 core functionality.
. . .

Yes, but IMHO resolving (in the sense of resolving FO object 
properties like I think is meant by FOP) is part of the core 
functionality. I'm talking about computing presentation attributes for 
child elements based on their parent's attributes. 

. . .
 This can big opportunity also for other projects to collaborate in
 the rendering.
 JFor, for example (I don't remember who maintains it ;-P)
. . 
That's me by the way ;-)
(but I haven't done much lately)

-- 
 Bertrand Delacrétaz (codeconsult.ch, jfor.org)

 buzzwords: XML, java, XSLT, cocoon, mentoring/teaching/coding.
 disclaimer: eternity is very long. mostly towards the end. get ready.






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Re: [PROPOSAL] FOP+iText = FOP-NG -next generation-

2002-03-14 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 14 March 2002 09:19, Keiron Liddle wrote:
. . .
 Firstly the Area Tree is unavoidable. We must have a place to do the
 layout and to store the page information.
. . .

Unavoidable for Layout rendering, isn't it?
I thought structure-based rendering wouldn't need the area tree.

. . .
 For the FOTree to structure document it is a different issue, that I
 hope we will solve one day. Maybe sax events could be used here.
. . .

How hard would it be to render the FOTree in XSL-FO (based on SAX 
events) with all possible attributes resolved? 

Speaking specifically about the jfor RTF converter, this would allow it 
to be used as a FOP renderer without needing as much code changes as an 
API-based integration. Might be a little slower but much more flexible.

This would allow the parser and property resolver (is that the right 
term?) components of FOP to be reused by jfor and future 
structure-based renderers.

-- 
 Bertrand Delacrétaz (codeconsult.ch, jfor.org)

 buzzwords: XML, java, XSLT, cocoon, mentoring/teaching/coding.
 disclaimer: eternity is very long. mostly towards the end. get ready.






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Re: [PROPOSAL] FOP+iText = FOP-NG -next generation-

2002-03-14 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 14 March 2002 09:27, Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:
. . .
 Hmmm... AFAIK FO is about layout, not semantical structure.
 Bold is just Bold, and not emphasis or strong.
 Maybe I don't get the point. Could you elaborate more please?
. . .

The term structure renderer (as you could find by searching the list 
archive probably ;-) is used here for yet-to-be renderers that don't do 
any layout by themselves.

If you're generating RTF or MIF formats, for example, you usually don't 
need to know on which page a given FO element will go, you leave this 
to the word processor or desktop publishing program that will use the 
generated document.

So these renderers will be plugged in right after the parsing and 
property resolution stages, before the layout stage.

-- 
 Bertrand Delacrétaz (codeconsult.ch, jfor.org)

 buzzwords: XML, java, XSLT, cocoon, mentoring/teaching/coding.
 disclaimer: eternity is very long. mostly towards the end. get ready.






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Re: [PROPOSAL] FOP+iText = FOP-NG -next generation-

2002-03-14 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 14 March 2002 09:27, Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:
. . .
 I think that a SAXrenderer could be the solution. SAX is based on
 calling a method when a tag begin-content-end is reached. It can be
 used to communicate the Area Tree to the renderer in a clean way,
 whith a standard interface.
. . .

Won't work I think, print-based layout (as opposed to structure-based) 
requires two-way communication between the layout engine and the 
renderer (to compute the width text runs, for example).

-- 
 Bertrand Delacrétaz (codeconsult.ch, jfor.org)

 buzzwords: XML, java, XSLT, cocoon, mentoring/teaching/coding.
 disclaimer: eternity is very long. mostly towards the end. get ready.






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Re: [PROPOSAL] FOP+iText = FOP-NG -next generation-

2002-03-14 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hi Peter,

 Aside from my low opinion of SAX for process coupling, there should
 be no need for communication back from the renderer.  
. . .
cool - I thought the Area Tree code needed to know about font metrics 
and the like, but if this communication is one-way all the better.

Regarding SAX events, I really meant that for structure renderers. What 
I envision (in the context of RTF rendering through jfor) is the 
possibility of using the FOP front-end only to resolve XSL-FO 
properties, like an XSL-FO preprocessor if you want.

That's for this preprocessor-to-StructureRenderer interface that I 
think using XML makes sense, for loose coupling of the 
StructureRenderers which would then not necessarily be part of the FOP 
code base.

If we agree that XML is good for this, I think generating this XML 
through SAX events allows the preprocessor component to be efficiently 
integrated in Cocoon (for example) later on, without having to 
serialize and reparse the XML.

-Bertrand

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Re: Area tree - renderer (pr.fo for structure renderers)

2002-03-18 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Saturday 16 March 2002 14:52, Peter B. West wrote:
. . .
The last stage of the FOP process translates one page
 description (the area tree) into another (the input to the target
 renderer.)

ok

 So why would anyone want to interpose another translation step into
 this tightly coupled arrangement?  Who knows?  
. . .
For page-based renderers where FOP has to compute the layout (like for 
PDF output), I don't see a need for another translation step either. 
IMHO asking who knows is usually a sign that a feature is not needed 
*at this stage of development*...

OTOH, for structure-based renderers like RTF and MIF, I think the only 
parts of FOP that are reusable are the first two stages: parsing and 
property resolution (apart from infrastructure like logging, config, 
etc. which might come from Avalon in the future?).

Last week we had a talk about using XML to communicate between FOP 
pipeline components, but for me this currently would only make sense 
between the property resolver and structure renderers components.

The deal is being able to reuse FOP's property resolution (p.res) in 
different contexts. I think the following usage scenarios could greatly 
benefit from reusing FOP's front-end (parser + p.res).

In the following I call pr.fo an XSL-FO document where all properties 
(fonts, sizes, etc.) are explicitely written, for example when 
inherited from parents:

a) XSL-FO to RTF conversion:
FOP parser - FOP p.res - pr.fo - jfor converter

b) XSL-FO to MIF conversion
FOP parser - FOP p.res - pr.fo - yet-to-write XML-to-MIF converter 

c) automated testing of first FOP stages
FOP parser - FOP p.res - pr.fo - XML testing tool

Keeping in mind that RTF and MIF are formats where the page layout is 
left to the client software to compute (word processor or FrameMaker), 
keeping these converters independent of FOP instead of integrating them 
has several advantages:

b) Helps keep FOP focused on its main task: generating great PDF from 
XSL-FO documents

c) If FOP is ever rewritten in another language for performance, these 
converters, being much less compute-intensive, can stay in java and 
keep the same interface to the FOP components that they use

d) assuming I want to write a MIF converter, basing it on XSL-FO input 
instead of on a FOP API allows me to easily include MIF-specific 
constructs for applications where XSL-FO conformance is not needed but 
precise control of the generated MIF is (often a requirement for MIF 
when producing half-finished documents that are typographically 
reviewed before printing).

In conclusion, I think an interface based on XML documents (possibly 
this pr.fo discussed above) is the best choice to use between the FOP 
property resolution stage and the structure renderers like RTF and 
MIF renderers.

OTOH I agree that using XML between the layout and rendering stages 
doesn't make sense at this stage of FOP development.

Due to many other commitments, I don't have time right now (sorry, 
I know you're getting used to hear this) to implement this pr.fo 
interface, but if we agree on its usefulness I'll put this high on my 
list and hopefully give it a shot in the next few weeks...

-- 
 Bertrand Delacrétaz (codeconsult.ch, jfor.org)

 buzzwords: XML, java, XSLT, cocoon, mentoring/teaching/coding.
 disclaimer: eternity is very long. mostly towards the end. get ready.

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Re: Area tree - renderer (pr.fo for structure renderers)

2002-03-18 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Monday 18 March 2002 13:37, Peter B. West wrote:
. . .
 Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
 In conclusion, I think an interface based on XML documents (possibly
 this pr.fo discussed above) is the best choice to use between the
  FOP property resolution stage and the structure renderers like
  RTF and MIF renderers.

 The big problem is in defining the p.res step.  How far do you need
 to go with this?  If you require all of the relative lengths
 resolved, e.g., you'll have to wait until the layout is done.  The
 properties are only finalised as the area tree is being constructed. 
 It's one of the things that makes this all so frustrating.

ok I see.
I'll try to play with this for RTF rendering based on jfor, to get a 
feel for how hard/useful this is. 

In case of jfor, what is needed is mostly property inheritance, for 
which AFAIK rules are well defined in FOP. 

I guess relative lengths will probably stay relative in the RTF code, 
but I'll have to play with it to be positive about this.

-Bertrand

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Re: Area tree - renderer (pr.fo for structure renderers)

2002-03-18 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hi Peter,

On Monday 18 March 2002 22:06, Peter B. West wrote:
. . .
 There's another gotcha - markers.  The properties in markers are
 resolved relative to the retrieve-marker invocation point.
. . .

Thanks - I'll keep this in mind when I get to play with this stuff..

-Bertrand

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Re: [Vote] New committers: Peter West, Joerg Pietschmann?

2002-04-11 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 11 April 2002 12:16, you wrote:
 I propose that we offer Peter West and Joerg Pietschmann to become
 committers.

+1 for both!

(Although officially a committer I have done nothing concrete yet, so I hope 
my vote counts ;-)

-Bertrand

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Re: Lest we forget

2002-04-25 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

This probably helps: http://www.anzacday.org.au/
-Bertrand

On Friday 26 April 2002 00:38, Martin Stricker wrote:
 Peter B. West wrote:
  Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
  At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
  We shall remember them.
 
  Lest we forget.
  Anzac Day 25th April 2002

 Could you please explain this e-mail?



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Re: Lest we forget (please use REPLY!)

2002-04-26 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Friday 26 April 2002 08:09, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
 This probably helps: http://www.anzacday.org.au/

sorry for the noise - I didn't see that the question had long been answered.

PLEASE everybody use reply-to when replying to mailing lists messages. With 
the right mail client, it allows discussions threads to stay together.

-Bertrand


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Re: properties

2002-05-01 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Wednesday 01 May 2002 18:19, Peter B. West wrote:
 Does the near-silence on this one signify consent?

I don't know enough about this to give meaningful advice, so in my case yes, 
silence means consent.

- Bertrand

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Re: Structure Handlers - RTF Renderer

2002-05-27 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hi Keiron,

. . .
 We should be able to set common objects like the logging and config on
 the structure handler itself.
 But the context idea could be useful for other objects that it may need
 to access.
. . .

ok, It wasn't clear for me either what would go into the context object, but 
it is certainly better that passing the FO object directly.

. . .
 I'm not sure about the best way to do things like the table columns. It
 would be simpler if it could do a start table after it has all the table
 columns rather than needing to get each table column individually
 through method calls.
. . .

Would this scenario be easy to implement?

startTable
  startRow (maybe after all FOs for the row have been parsed)
startCell (maybe  after all FOs for the cell have been parsed)
  start/end stuff for cell contents
endCell
more start/endCell
  endRow
  more start/endRow
endTable

or do you mean just one startTable with row/columns contained in the FO?

I'd prefer many event calls, as the StructureHandler wouldn't need to know as 
much about FOs in this case. Conceptually (and this might be useful for 
concrete stuff like testing too), I think the StructureHandler needs to 
be able to rebuild the XSL-FO structure with as little code as possible.

Maybe (if easier to implement or to avoid slowing down PDF 
rendering) this event generation can be done by an intermediate component 
that decodes the FOs and generates detailed events?

-Bertrand


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Re: Structure Handlers - RTF Renderer

2002-05-31 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hi Peter,

Sorry for taking so long, week's been hectic around here.

. . .
 I think you will still have attribute resolution problems.  Remember
 that some attributes are only going to be resolved during the layout.


I understand that some attributes cannot be resolved at the parsing stage, 
and as Keiron mentioned, there will need to be a way to transfer them with 
all the relevant information.

The implications for RTF are not that clear for me though (mostly because 
jfor is currently sooo weak about attributes, AND I never worked on a 
print-type renderer) - I think I need to be able to play with actual code to 
better understand the issues. AFAIK Keiron is working on a first shot 
StructureHandler which should help me jump in.

. . .
 It seems to me that the general solution would involve the definition of
 a structure api, taking account of the layout dependencies.  
. . .

I agree, but again the whole picture is not clear enough in my mind yet to be 
able to specifiy these dependencies. I suggest that we wait for Keiron's 
skeleton code, on which we build a rough RTF converter which will help us (me 
at least ;-) understand the issues on concrete examples.

We should then be able to define a set of XSL-FO documents that show 
different use-cases for attribute resolution.

. . .
 You may already have documented the structure transformations needed for
 FO-RTF.  If so, it would be a very good idea to include them in the NEW
 DESIGN documentation.
. . .

Unfortunately not - what jfor currently does is 1-to-1 mapping of basic 
attributes like font sizes, bold, italic, etc. so there's not much to be said.

-Bertrand

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Re: Fop and JDK1.2

2002-06-10 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Monday 10 June 2002 17:06, Christian Geisert wrote:
. . .
 1) Declare that Fop needs JDK1.3

Could cause confusion with Cocoon users - Cocoon requires JDK1.2.

 2) Remove truetype font support from AWT viewer

+0

 3) Compile Fop with JDK1.3 (which will be done anyway)
 and state in the release notes that compiling with JDK1.2
 and using truetype fonts in the AWT viewer does not work.

+1 
If I understand correctly, a version compiled with 1.3 would run ok on 1.2 
except for these truetype fonts? Then fine.

-Bertrand

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Re: Fop and JDK1.2 (using ant copy tasks to select implementations)

2002-06-11 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Tuesday 11 June 2002 08:22, Jeremias Maerki wrote:
. . .
 2. Try to build up the support for version dependant code for the next
 release. 
. . .

Note that this is fairly easy to do using filtering in ant copy tasks and 
package names containing identifiers.

For example:
package A contains interfaces, abstract classes and factories as needed
package A.jdk12 contains 1.2 implementations
package A.jdk13 contains 1.3 implementations

The ant copy task (copying source files to an intermediate directory before 
compiling) can then filter source files based on package names, in order to 
select and compile the right classes.

-Bertrand

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Re: Fop and JDK1.2 (using ant copy tasks to select implementations)

2002-06-11 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Tuesday 11 June 2002 14:43, Rhett Aultman wrote:
. . .
 Rather than relying on Ant, I'd say a runtime detection of VM demographics
 (version, vendor, etc) would be in order, which could then allow a
 classloader to select the correct classes to instantiate.
. . .

I like your idea a lot - hopefully it won't be too complicated to implement, 
but there might be cases where you actually have classes that do not compile 
on some VM version.

If that's the case, multiple JDKs might be needed to compile FOP completely, 
and we must make sure that single-VM compilation remains possible. So we 
might need to combine both approaches in the end.

-Bertrand

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Re: For once Good news and a thank you

2002-06-13 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hi Jochen,

Would it be thinkable for you to share examples of your XSL-FO documents, as 
good examples of what works well in FOP?

The question of which constructs to use to get good performance come often, 
so I think it would be a worthwile addition to the project.

If needed, I can send you a piece of java code that obfuscates the text of 
XML files by replacing all words with others from a list, so that the 
confidentiality of your data would be preserved.

Please let us know what you think!

-- 
 Bertrand Delacrétaz (codeconsult.ch, jfor.org)

 buzzwords: XML, java, XSLT, cocoon, mentoring/teaching/coding.
 disclaimer: eternity is very long. mostly towards the end. get ready.






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StringWarper - obfuscates XML files (was: For once Good news and a thank you)

2002-06-13 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Thursday 13 June 2002 14:51, Ralph LaChance wrote:
 ooo, I could use that !

You'll find it at
http://codeconsult.ch/download/string-warper/string-warper-2002-06-13.zip

There's a build.xml for ant, target test runs a self-test.

Actually I should have said a piece of java hacking. You'll see that it's 
dead simple, doesn't even use a proper parser. 

Which means it might *destroy* some XML files depending on the constructs 
used. Please let me know if you make it better (wellthatsnothard)!

-Bertrand

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Re: Licence short or long

2002-06-26 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Wednesday 26 June 2002 22:42, Jeremias Maerki wrote:
. . .
 We have the short form
 but it seems like we have to switch (back?) to the long form.
. . .

I agree, Stefano's message [1] in the thread you mention makes it clear, . . 
.the ASF board, to avoid confusion, wants everybody to stick with the full 
license until the new license is out. . .

-Bertrand

[1] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=avalon-devm=102511331724304w=2

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Re: FO to RTF

2002-07-29 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

On Friday 26 July 2002 20:05, J.U. Anderegg wrote:
. . .
 RTF is the format of yesterday: better generate MicroSoft Office XML or
 Open Office XML.

Depends on what you're aiming for. RTF is a terrible format, yes, but at 
least it allows documents to be opened by a fair number of wordprocessors. 

-Bertrand

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Re: AW: FO to RTF

2002-07-29 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hi Peter,

 I tentatively suggested using XSLT to generate RTF a little while ago,
 but I had no idea whether it was feasible.  The main question would seem
 to be: is RTF a text-only format or a binary format?  Can anyone answer
 that one for us?

AFAIK, everything in RTF can be expressed with text-only characters, and it 
would certainly be possible to convert XSL-FO to RTF using XSLT. 

Our choice to use java for the jfor converter was based on better 
availability of programming and debugging tools.

-Bertrand

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Re: FO to RTF (new jfor license)

2002-07-29 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hello,

On Friday 26 July 2002 10:20, Mulet, Jordi wrote:
. . .
  We have started to experiment with jfor (FO-RTF) and we don't know the
 best path to follow and if there are plans to integrate jfor in FOP as a
 RTF renderer.
. . .

Note that the jfor license was recently changed to allow it to an 
ASF-compatible one, see www.jfor.org for more info. This allows jfor to be 
distributed with ASF projects.

This means that the RTF library part of jfor can be used in binary form as 
a back-end for FOP (StructureHandler) to generate RTF, without having to 
maintain two RTF libraries (which would be the case if the jfor RTF code was 
moved to the FOP codebase).

I think this will ease the transition from jfor to FOP for RTF generation, 
until FOP 1.x is released.

-- 
 Bertrand Delacrétaz (codeconsult.ch, jfor.org)

 buzzwords: XML, java, XSLT, cocoon, mentoring/teaching/coding.
 disclaimer: eternity is very long. mostly towards the end. get ready.






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Re: New Developer Suggestion

2002-10-09 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hi Scott,

On Wednesday 09 October 2002 16:20, Sauyet, Scott (OTS-HAR) wrote:
 Does anyone have a suggestion about something I could look at fixing /
 enhancing which is not mission-critical, but which might give me a chance
 to look at a fair bit of the code?

The integration of jfor (www.jfor.org) as a structure renderer for RTF 
documents is still waiting for someone to jump in. If you have good java 
skills and want to tackle this one we can certainly help you find your way.

But note that this part of FOP is not at all related to PDF layout, fonts, 
etc., it's a fairly different way of rendering documents.

-- 
 Bertrand Delacrétaz (codeconsult.ch, jfor.org)

 buzzwords: XML, java, XSLT, cocoon, mentoring/teaching/coding.
 disclaimer: eternity is very long. mostly towards the end. get ready.






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Where to start for an RTF renderer (was: New Developer Suggestion)

2002-10-09 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hi Scott,

On Wednesday 09 October 2002 17:15, Sauyet, Scott (OTS-HAR) wrote:
. . .
 So is integrating other renderers something that the group
 would eventually like to do?
. . .

Yes, we've been talking about structure-based renderers (like RTF and MIF) 
vs. layout-based ones (PDF being the focal point) for some time. 

The following messages might shed some light on this:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fop-devm=102742684000426w=2
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fop-devm=102795797014083w=2

. . .
 As of today, I know nothing about PDF syntax and little about RTF.  I
 figure I'm going to have to learn both.  I understand FO fairly well, and I
 speak Java fairly fluently.  What do you think is first priority?
. . .

As Jeremias said, you're the one who decides what you'd like to work on.
I'm personally biased towards the RTF renderer because that's the part I know 
best, so here are some starting points if you're interested in studying this 
in more detail and hopefully jumping in.

You won't need much RTF knowledge to start with as the jfor RTF library will 
generate it for you, and no PDF knowledge at all since this RTF renderer will 
bypass the layout and PDF generation stages completely. 

Starting points:

1) org/apache/fop/apps/StructureHandler is the base class that receives 
structure events from the FO tree while the input XSL-FO is being parsed. 
The main class of the RTF renderer will inherit from this class to transform 
the events into an RTF document.

2) Package org/apache/fop/mif is an example of how to build a 
structure-based renderer similar to what the RTF renderer 
(org/apache/fop/rtf) will be.

3) jfor (www.jfor.org) is currently a separate project that converts XSL-FO 
to RTF directly, but could take advantage of FOP's much better handling of 
XSL-FO properties, hence the plan of replacing jfor by a FOP RTF renderer.

4) My suggestion is to first use the RTF library from jfor in binary form, by 
including jfor's jar in the FOP distribution, to create the RTF document from 
the StructureHandler events. The current jfor code does a similar thing where 
the jfor Converter (jfor/jfor/converter/Converter) uses SAX events to drive 
the jfor RTF library.

Later, when FOP becomes better than jfor at generating RTF, we can move the 
jfor RTF library code into the FOP codebase. I'd like this to happen in 
a second stage to avoid having to maintain two RTF libraries while both 
projects coexist.

Hope this helps - feel free to ask any additional questions!
-Bertrand

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Re: Where to start for an RTF renderer (was: New Developer Sugges tion)

2002-10-10 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz

Hi Scott,

. . .anyone who wants to do it will not offend me by going ahead and doing
 it without me.
. . .

We haven't had too many volunteers lately in this area, so this shouldn't be 
a problem.

Just make sure to send your patches early, without waiting for your 
enhancements to be finished. This will help coordinating your work with 
that of other developers.

-Bertrand

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Re: Fopping 1-12 to Jan-Dec

2002-10-28 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Monday 28 October 2002 11:18, Guy D'haenens wrote:
 WHAT'S THIS?
 I DIDN'T WRITE THIS MESSAGE!

I think the from: address is such that it is being rewritten by some part of 
your mail system before delivery, it happened here too.

If you look at 
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fop-devm=103579950332696w=2
you'll see that the from: address is different of what you got.

Don't feed the trolls...

-Bertrand

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[FYI] jfor integration jumpstarted...

2002-10-31 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
I have added jfor-0.7.1.jar and its license to the lib subdirectory, and 
created a first version of an RTFHandler that outputs (very rough) RTF 
documents using the existing jfor RTF library [1].

build.sh examples now generates RTF documents, assuming the following is 
set in build-local.properties in the directory that contains build.xml:

  # output format for ant examples
  build.property.examples.mime.type = rtf

I probably won't work on this over the weekend (I'll be building the music 
room instead ;-), so if anyone wants to have a shot at improving it, go for 
it! 
Examples of how to use the jfor RTF library can be found in the 
org.jfor.jfor.converter package of jfor, see www.jfor.org.

-Bertrand

[1] as already discussed here, this is done so as to avoid having to maintain 
two RTF libraries until FOP is better than jfor at generating RTF

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Re: handling patches (how about fop 2)

2002-11-02 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Saturday 02 November 2002 10:35, Victor Mote wrote:
. . .I would also recommend that, in the above case,
 we actually put the code into two different projects. 
. . .

+1, I like the idea.

How about moving the new code (HEAD) to a separate (xml-fop2) CVS project 
to clarify things, and maybe name the new version fop 2 instead of 1.0x?

Although the current version is 0.20.x, it *is* used in production at a 
number of sites, so going directly to version 2.x for a mostly new codebase 
makes sense IMHO.

-Bertrand

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Re: handling patches

2002-11-02 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Friday 01 November 2002 16:51, Keiron Liddle wrote:
. . .Maybe the simplest is to move the old layout to the trunk, get that
 working and put the new layout in a branch. But it needs to be agreed
 upon.
. . .

It would be great if the layout engine could be factored out as a component 
with a clean interface, so as to be able to switch between current engine, 
not perfect but usable, and new engine, not finished but testable.

I have a feeling that working on the layout engine requires fairly 
specialized skills, whereas other parts of the code are more general in 
nature (logging, Driver, config, Avalonizing, etc.). IMHO the layout engine 
is the most risky component of FOP, so a good candidate for a component 
with a thin interface.

-Bertrand

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Re: Line ending chaos in our codebase

2002-11-04 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Monday 04 November 2002 23:53, Peter B. West wrote:
. . .I don't know the
 mechanism for handling line-end differences on entry into a CVS
 repository on a unix box.  
. . .

AFAIK as long as the binary file flag is not set, CVS takes care of line 
endings by itself when a file is checked out 
(http://www.loria.fr/~molli/cvs/doc/cvs_9.html#SEC76), converting them to 
what's appropriate for the platform.

Funny things can happen if people checkout files on a unix box and edit them 
from a windows box, but most windows editors handle this correctly.

-Bertrand

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Re: Line ending chaos in our codebase

2002-11-04 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Monday 04 November 2002 17:02, Jeremias Maerki wrote:
. . .Does anyone have a good idea how to...
 2. enforce correct line endings?

Using the commitinfo administrative file, scripts can be configured in CVS to 
run when a file is committed, at which point you could detect the problem. 

I'm not sure if it's worth the effort though. When such a problem is found, 
you could also study file revisions to find out who created the problem and 
tell people to fix their environment.

-Bertrand

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Re: [RT] Proprietary extension to fo:external-graphic

2002-11-06 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Wednesday 06 November 2002 09:55, Jeremias Maerki wrote:
. . .
 fo:external-graphic src=url(http://localhost/mydynamicimage)
 xmlns:fop=http://xml.apache.org/fop; fop:disable-caching=true/
. . .

There are some fox: extensions already IIRC (never used them though, but 
http://xml.apache.org/fop/extensions.html says so), so I think new ones 
should be created in a consistent way.

I'm ok with such extensions (we use similar things in jfor), just would like 
to make sure that there is only one extension mechanism.

-Bertrand

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Re: [RT] Proprietary extension to fo:external-graphic

2002-11-06 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Wednesday 06 November 2002 12:31, Keiron Liddle wrote:
. . .
 What sort of jfor extensions are there, what do they do?

We have jfor:style to define RTF styles (similar to CSS classes in concept) 
on the generated RTF elements. A concept that does not exist in XSL-FO as 
it doesn't make sense when generating printable documents.

And also jfor:cmd to set options for the jfor processor, currently used for 
special tricks/hacks for keep-with stuff.

-Bertrand

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Re: forrest is coming?

2002-11-06 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Wednesday 06 November 2002 10:03, Keiron Liddle wrote:
. . .
 Lots more to do but I think it is a good start.

Great job indeed!
I've also been looking at Forrest more closely recently, already very usable 
and looks even more promising.

 Need to brighten up or change the logo. Maybe we should have 
 a competition.

Good idea, make sure you announce it on fop-users too if you decide to do it.

-Bertrand

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Re: feature request queue

2002-11-06 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Wednesday 06 November 2002 14:58, Oleg Tkachenko wrote:
. . .
 Patch queue looks very good, and what about introducing one more queue for
 feature requests? 
. . .

I think these can be identified by the severity=enhancement field of 
bugzilla issues, isn't that sufficient?

Maybe this must be documented on http://xml.apache.org/fop/bugs.html, adding 
a comment make sure to set severity=enhancement if you're entering a feature 
request?

-Bertrand

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Re: interface instead of implementation

2002-11-06 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Wednesday 06 November 2002 16:18, Jeremias Maerki wrote:
. . .
 would you mind using the interface instead of the implementation where
 possible? 

big +1.
The only drawback is when you need to clone Collections, but the benefits far 
outweigh this I think.

Maybe a minimal best practices or style guide document for developers 
would be nice, I don't think there is one already?

-Bertrand

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FOP developer's style guide? (Was: interface instead of implementation)

2002-11-06 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Wednesday 06 November 2002 16:31, Rhett Aultman wrote:
. . .
 Maybe we should seriously consider a FOP developer coding standard and
 start writing it down and putting it on the site.  I'd offer to help with
 that.
. . .

How about using a wiki page (web page where everyone can very easily write 
and edit) to work together on a draft style guide. including links to 
existing guides so we don't reinvent the wheel?

If I get some +1s on this I'll setup the page and publish its address here.

-Bertrand

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Re: FOP developer's style guide? (Was: interface instead of implementation)

2002-11-06 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Wow, that's a quick vote...

I have setup the page at
http://codeconsult.ch/wiki/index.php/FopDevelopersStyleGuide
with a most basic style guide skeleton.

I have to run now, but feel free to work on it. Make sure you keep copies of 
what you write, I cannot guarantee backups on this server yet.

-Bertrand

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Re: [VOTE] Oleg for committer

2002-11-07 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Thursday 07 November 2002 09:23, Keiron Liddle wrote:
 Hi Developers,

 I suggest we have a vote for Oleg to be a committer. If Oleg accepts
 then he can get on with making FOP great!

+1 - welcome!

-- 
 Bertrand Delacrétaz (codeconsult.ch, jfor.org)

 buzzwords: XML, java, XSLT, Cocoon, FOP, mentoring/teaching/coding.
 blogspace http://www.codeconsult.ch/bertrand

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Re: Another Bugzilla URL

2002-11-07 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Thursday 07 November 2002 10:09, Victor Mote wrote:
. . .
 BTW, I haven't found any doc on the mozilla site to help in building these
 URLs. If anyone knows of some, I would be grateful. 
. . .

I don't think there's any other way than studying what the bugzilla query 
form sends when you submit it, maybe trying to remove parameters that have no 
effect to keep the URLs short.

Bugzilla allows queries to be saved (per-user at least), you might be able to 
create a named query with the appropriate parameters and call it from a URL 
by giving only the query name (but I didn't try it). This would prevent those 
URLs from being too long, which might cause them to be broken by old browsers.

-Bertrand

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Re: Getting breaks: revisited

2002-11-15 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Friday 15 November 2002 09:30, Keiron Liddle wrote:
. . .(does anyone even know what I am talking
 about)

Not much on my side as the whole layout thing is still a mystery to me 
(because I have no experience in computing layouts and never took 
the time to study this part the code in detail). Anyway I'll try to put my 2 
cents in...

From your description, I get a feeling that a separate BreaksManager class 
might be needed, i.e. it might be better making this break stuff modular 
instead of making the layout managers more complex. 

I told you...just 2 cents ;-)

-Bertrand

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Re: [OT] Apache committers meeting in german-speaking area

2002-11-15 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Friday 15 November 2002 10:02, Jeremias Maerki wrote:
. . .There was the idea to organize a meeting among Apache
 committers next year in the german-speaking part of the world 
. . .

I might be interested too, depending on where and when. I am subscribed to 
party@.

-Bertrand

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Re: [VOTE] Victor as committer

2002-11-20 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Wednesday 20 November 2002 10:23, Keiron Liddle wrote:
 Plenty of eagerness shown already and I am sure he will do lots more for
 the project.

Yes, agreed, here's my
+1

-Bertrand

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Re: Style guide (update)

2002-11-20 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Wednesday 20 November 2002 15:15, Jeremias Maerki wrote:
. . .I've finally finished the first draft for our style guide...

Thanks!

I voted -1 on most TBD stuff, braces and spaces are not really important IMHO 
and I think it's good that the style guide stays as small as possible.

-Bertrand


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Re: Alt-Design status: XML handling

2002-11-20 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Great work Peter!
It makes a lot of sense to use higher-level than SAX events, and thanks for 
explaining this so clearly.

If you allow me a suggestion regarding the structure of the code: maybe using 
some table-driven stuff instead of the many if statements in 
FoSimplePageMaster would be more readable?

Something like:

class EventHandler
{
  EventHandler(String regionName,boolean discardSpace,boolean required)
  ...
}

/** table of event handlers that must be applied, in order */
EventHandler [] handlers = {
  new EventHandler(FObjectNames.REGION_BODY,true,true),
  new EventHandler(FObjectNames.REGION_BEFORE,true,false)
};

...then, in FoSimplePageMaster(...) loop over handlers and let them process 
the events.

I don't know if this applies in general but it might be clearer to read and 
less risky to modify.

-Bertrand

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Re: [VOTE] Victor as committer (votes from non-commiters)

2002-11-20 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Wednesday 20 November 2002 20:11, Rhett Aultman wrote:
 I thought everyone was allowed to use a vote to express their opinion.  If
 I've gravely mistaken this, then I'll stop voting.

I *think* it is so, that everyone is welcome to express their opinion. But as 
a mostly inactive committer I'm not the one to decide.

Indicating this when voting helps, something like:

 VOTE: should FOP be rewritten in Forth?
-1 (from a non-committer)

-Bertrand

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Re: Style guide (2nd update)

2002-11-21 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Thursday 21 November 2002 17:16, Jeremias Maerki wrote:
. . .
 The MUST part is very small and establishes some hard rules. I'll try to
 do the final layout in XML in a way that takes this into consideration.

ok, cool!

. . .
 By the way, due to common desire I added a few lines on exception
 handling and a few other items that I found were agreed upon in recent
 discussion.

I added note 4 to propose a different/additional way of saying that 
exceptions are important.

I'd put this stuff about exceptions as a subsection in the MUSTS, 
this so much more important than brace placement ;-)

-Bertrand

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Re: Style guide (2nd update)

2002-11-21 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Thursday 21 November 2002 17:31, Oleg Tkachenko wrote:
. . .
   final String myString = (String)myListIterator.next();
. . .
 How do you think, is this final specifier only a style oriented or it have
 some performance benefit also?

I don't know about performance, but I use it all the time anyway as it makes 
intentions clearer and can save the day by preventing someone from messing up 
with the variable value.

-Bertrand

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Re: FOP Servlet, contrib stuff and tutorial

2002-11-27 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Wednesday 27 November 2002 09:36, Keiron Liddle wrote:
 On Tue, 2002-11-26 at 13:53, Jeremias Maerki wrote:
. . .
  Problems that need to be addressed:
  - All Java sources need to be checked easily before a release (do they
compile, do they work?).

 Could ant call help out here? No extra build.sh or build.bat.
. . .

The ant ant task can easily call an external build.xml.

The cvs task allows sources to be checked out (but AFAIK requires 
command-line CVS to be installed on Windows systems).

-Bertrand

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Re: Style guide (2nd update)

2002-12-02 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
On Sunday 01 December 2002 22:26, Oleg Tkachenko wrote:
. . .
 J.Pietschmann wrote:
  I think
  we should leverage final more often in FOP.

 At http://codeconsult.ch/wiki/index.php/FopDevelopersStyleGuide we've
 got +2 vs -2 on this point, so taking into acount your opinion it's +3
 vs -2 now.

I think the +2 vs -2 that you mention refer to declaring variables in the 
inner scope, not precisely to using final or not.

This thing about final is really minor IMHO, I think it's a good practice and 
should be mentioned as such, but I wouldn't make any checks on it.

-Bertrand

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Re: Happy Holidays

2002-12-21 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Happy Holidays team - I've been very quiet lately but this is 
*definitely* a good crowd, I wish I could spend more time here!

-Bertrand


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FOP wiki pages moved

2002-12-23 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
As there is now an official Apache wiki [1], I moved the pages that 
were on my server to

http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?FOPProjectPages

Please do any further work on them there. They still need some cleanup 
after moving, I'll do it in January unless someone finds time to do it 
before.

-Bertrand

[1] as announced on community@ - thanks Andy Oliver!


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JforIntegrationInFop - background and guidelines

2002-12-26 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Hi FOP team,

Due to popular demand (well, two people anyway), I have written this at 
the Wiki:

  http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?JforIntegrationInFop

It explains my (hopefully our) motivations for integrating jfor into 
FOP, and how we could proceed on this.

I'll be off for skiing (assuming snow comes) for a few days, so even 
quieter than usual.


--
 Bertrand Delacretaz (codeconsult.ch, jfor.org)

 buzzwords: XML, java, XSLT, Cocoon, FOP, mentoring/teaching/coding.
 blogspace http://www.codeconsult.ch/bertrand


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Re: Integration of Peter's work

2003-01-23 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Peter B. West wrote:
. . .

What will be interesting here is the possibility
of defining a set of structure events for integration with the structure 
renderers like RTF, and I hope we can have some fruitful discussions 
with Bertrand on this.

Looks promising, let me know where to look when the time is right.

-Bertrand


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Re: [VOTE] Conversion from src/org.. to src/java/org..

2003-03-11 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Le Vendredi, 7 mars 2003, à 17:39 Europe/Zurich, Jeremias Maerki a 
écrit :

...My main motivations for the move as such:
- Easier handling of FOP in IDEs
- Best practices confirmance
- Finish what we (I) started
+0.5, the IDE thing might be useful.

As an option, we can also agree to do the same in the maintenance 
branch,
-0, I don't see a need here.

-Bertrand

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Re: Nomination of Glen Mazza as committer

2003-06-16 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Le Lundi, 16 juin 2003, à 02:12 Europe/Zurich, Victor Mote a écrit :

...However, I think it is appropriate to nominate Glen Mazza
for committer status
+1, welcome!

-Bertrand

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Re: [RTF] Jfor integration

2003-06-19 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Hi Victor,

If you're going to work on the RTFHandler I'd be happy to commit the 
relevant jfor sources (the RTF library I assume) to the FOP codebase 
with appropriate package name changes.

As Jeremias mentions, it might be better if I do it myself so that the 
legal stuff is clear.
I should be able to do it between today and tomorrow.

The idea of using jfor in binary form at first was to avoid having to 
maintain two RTF libraries - but if you're going for it, then the time 
might be right to actually move the code here.

.. Some of the source files contain non-ASCII characters (see
main/JForVersionInfo.java, line 67, for example), but are encoded as 
ASCII
(instead of UTF-8), so the IDE was choking...
Are .java files meant to be encoded in UTF-8? I didn't know that.

...dropping in the Apache license (looks like no problem),
no problem indeed

and some
style issues
Do you mean code writing style like brace positions and stuff, or 
deeper code structure issues?

-Bertrand

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Re: [RTF] Jfor integration

2003-06-20 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Hi Victor,

I have committed the classes from the jfor RTF library under 
org.apache.fop.rtf.rtflib.

They don't compile out of the box, so I disabled their compilation in 
build.xml for now, didn't have time to look further.

The next step would be to get them to compile, have the RTFHandler use 
them and remove jfor.jar from the lib directory.

You will probably find dependencies to other parts of jfor, let me know 
if you need more classes (but hopefully most of those dependencies are 
not needed).

...I don't want
to mislead anyone into thinking I'm making a big commitment here -- it 
will
probably be a little here and a little there...
fine - we'll see what happens!

...Java source is Unicode, and I don't think the encoding would 
matter, but
UTF-8 makes the most sense as most of the source is ASCII. And it 
could be
that most tools don't care, but I know that JBuilder does...
yes, idea for example uses a configurable file encoding.

...if there is some doc on the RTF libs,
there is none ATM.

...t seems like the wiki said to look at how the conversion tools used
them, but that didn't seem to help much.
Feel free to ask if you have questions. There is also the testdocs 
package some parts of the RTF library.

Does it make sense in the long run for the jfor libs to be a separate
project? It seems like it should have wider appeal than just for FOP,
although FOP is probably a good home for it for now.
I think FOP is a good start. It would be easy to create a separate 
rtflib.jar if needed.
By creating another project we would lose the FOP community, it is 
certainly better at this point to strengthen it by adding new features 
to FOP.

What's sorely missing IMHO is a way to validate the generated RTF other 
than by crashing word processors. If you hear about an RTF validator or 
an RTF parser grammar it would be a welcome improvement.

-Bertrand

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Re: Structure renderers area trees (Re: startup refactoring)

2003-06-22 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Le Dimanche, 22 juin 2003, à 21:15 Europe/Zurich, Arnd Beißner a écrit :
...Before we're getting too philosophical, let me say
that we're now talking two different issues:
1. Is it possible to develop a conforming XSL:FO
implementation that produces RTF or MIF or similar
ouput?
Probably not, XSL-FO is clearly meant for page output and RTF and MIF 
(unless abused in strange ways) are document formats, not page formats.

2. Are there really two different groups of output
formats and does it really make sense to support
both in one tool (FOP)
There are definitely two groups, and I agree with you that


All of the stuff needed for FO-RTF or FO-MIF
conversion is pretty straightforward stuff
The whole point of the StructureHandler interface is to be able to 
reuse FOP's frontend for structure-based renderers.
The impact of StructureHandler on the standard FOP output formats 
(PDF mostly) is minor, but it allows the FOP pipeline to branch 
cleanly, after the parsing and attributes resolution, to generate 
either structure-based or page-based formats.

Besides sharing code, the advantage in RTF and similar output formats 
being developed as part of FOP is the community: one project with more 
audience instead of several, each with a smaller audience.

-Bertrand

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Re: AW: Structure renderers area trees (Re: startup refactoring)

2003-06-23 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Le Lundi, 23 juin 2003, à 10:35 Europe/Zurich, J.U. Anderegg a écrit :
...
How do you plan to handle RTF styles?
In jfor we defined an extension to XSL-FO (the jfor-style attribute) 
to control RTF styles.

Another way would be to recognize sets of attribute values in the input 
XSL-FO and map them to RTF styles.

I think some form of extension is needed as (AFAIK) the concept of 
styles does not exist in XSL-FO, as it is meant for printed output.

If you import XML in the newest versions of FrameMaker for example, you 
have to define a kind of style map which recognizes specific 
constructions in the XML and assigns styles to them. This might also be 
an option, use a second input file that tells FOP which (MIF or RTF) 
styles to assign when certain patterns are recognized in the input.

...Is it difficult to transform tables and lists?
Not too much, but when we developed jfor we targeted it at RTF 1.5 
which as no support for nested tables, so we had to fake them using 
joined cells (as older versions of Word did).

Other than that, the tables and lists structures of XSL-FO map nicely 
to RTF. Possible problems are relative dimensions, for example it might 
be hard in RTF to say that a table must take 60% of the page height.

-Bertrand

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Re: AW: AW: Structure renderers area trees (Re: startup refactoring)

2003-06-23 Thread Bertrand Delacretaz
Le Lundi, 23 juin 2003, à 12:08 Europe/Zurich, J.U. Anderegg a écrit :

Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
...In jfor we defined an extension to XSL-FO (the jfor-style 
attribute)
to control RTF styles
(1) This is not a FOP extension, but rather a fundamental change of the
XSL-FO language, which does not know stlye sheets.
What I called extension applies to XSL-FO, or rather to the input 
documents handled by jfor, which use the jfor-style attribute in 
addition to standard XSL-FO. You're right that this is not a FOP 
extension.

This can be implemented cleanly with namespaces, so as not to pollute 
the XSL-FO input, something like

fo:block font-size=12pt style:name=someRtfStyle

Meaning that the style names are decorations to the input document.

...(2) I wrote a few weeks ago this and it is still my idea, how FOP 
should
store properties:

Apply the principles of relational databases to eliminate 
redundancies: set
up tables of unique/used fonts, strokes, colors, ...  and have the 
objects
reference table entries
Sounds reasonable, but I don't know enough about the current properties 
code to comment on this.

-Bertrand

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