If you get a chance after testing those tools, could you send use a feedback ?
TIA
Jacques
From: "Sanders, Brian" <[email protected]>
I don't necessarily rely on such tools, but they are good for creating a
rough draft of the end result. Once you get the general look you're
going for, then you go and hand-edit the code. I did find some tools on
the net that will convert HTML to FO. They're not perfect, but they may
be somewhat viable.
-----Original Message-----
From: David E Jones [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2009 1:33 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: *.fo.ftl
"Hand-coding" XSL-FO is a lot like direct editing of HTML and CSS.
Some people like editors that behave like a word processor so they
never have to see an HTML tag, but most people (especially in recent
years) seem to just go for the direct manipulation of HTML and CSS.
There are very few web sites, especially dynamic (database driven) web
sites, that don't have some or all of the HTML and CSS manually
written. Part of the problem is that if you want flexibility then you
can't effectively use many of the WYSIWIG style tools, so they're
really only good for simple sites. This is made more dramatic by
browser compatibility problems and such.
For XSL-FO the problem is a lot easier since the standards are better
(and more consistently followed, unlike HTML and CSS). My guess about
why such things are not more common is the same as for many tools,
including tools for things in OFBiz: doing it by direct text editing
is not that hard, so there just isn't much demand for special tools.
BTW, I'm talking specifically about things that are NOT static
documents. None of the XSL-FO templates in OFBiz are used for static
documents, so in addition to the editor having to understand XSL-FO it
also has to understand the dynamic parts of the document... and that
makes the editor a lot more complicated and a lot less useful compared
to just editing the files.
So yes, all of the HTML, CSS, XSL-FO, JavaScript, Java, XML, etc, etc
in OFBiz is created by hand (ever since late 2001 anyway, when we
decided that good tool design is a better approach than code
generation for poorly designed tools).
-David
On Mar 5, 2009, at 11:00 AM, Sanders, Brian wrote:
Tis a commercial product. So, were these files hand coded then?
-----Original Message-----
From: Jacques Le Roux [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2009 11:33 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: *.fo.ftl
Ha yes : xslfast
Jacques
From: "Jacques Le Roux" <[email protected]>
AFAIK, there are no free editors but some commercials (Google for
<<editor "xsf:fo">>)
Jacques
From: "Sanders, Brian" <[email protected]>
Were these files coded by hand, or was some sort of a WYSIWYG editor
used? I need to modify the pack slip and it's a bit of a headache.
Does
anyone know of a decent, free editor/designer I might be able to use?
Thanks.
