(If this is a question for the FO Converter mailing list, let me know and
I'll send it over there.)
I'm trying to figure out where XML-to-PDF conversion goes wrong when we
have non-standard fonts. We're using the 'Doulos SIL' font (specified in
our fo_ldocbook.xsl, which is called by our ldocbook.xxe) and Microsoft's
Vrinda font (specified in fontconfig.properties.src in the latest Java
release directory). (Doulos SIL is a free font that includes support for
all the IPA characters, as well as most Latin characters.)
Using the DocBook | Convert document menu command in XMLmind (professional
version), this process works when we convert the XML file to RTF. So I
presume the XML-to-FO part of the path works (if I'm understanding
correctly, the RTF file is produced from an XML-FO file). We can then
convert the RTF to PDF, although there are number of "gotchas" in this
process (due to problems with Microsoft and Adobe, not with XMLmind), and
we would like to eliminate the RTF intermediate step.
However, if we convert from XML to PDF, without going through the RTF
intermediate, every character that should be in the Doulos SIL or Vrinda
font comes out as '#', making it rather difficult to read the result...
In trying to figure out what's going on, I thought I would run the process
through convertdoc.bat so as to have a bit more control over intermediate
steps, and perhaps specify the fonts that the FO-to-PDF part of the
process should use. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get this to work.
Based on a msg from you in the archives (Jun 20 14:31:57 CEST 2007), and
on what appear to be the commands and parameters at the bottom of the
xslMenu.incl file in XMLmind_XML_Editor\addon\config\docbook), I tried the
following command line (wrapped onto two lines in this email):
convertdoc -v -p pdf "/book toc /article toc" docb.toPS
"H:\Data\CASL_Admin\Projects\308 Dual Use\TestCase.xml"
However, this crashes with the ff. error msg:
convertdoc: *** error: Command execution has failed:
FOP XSL-FO processor error:
cannot guess output format from extension ''
I thought I provided the output format with the 'pdf' parameter, but I
guess it's looking for something else. I'm also confused about the usage
of the -p vs. -s command line parameters. Are there some sample command
lines for convertdoc.bat that I can refer to?
(I'm hoping later on to move this conversion process over to Linux, but I
imagine the parameter settings will work the same over there.)
Mike Maxwell
CASL/ U MD
