On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 6:56 PM, luigi scarso wrote:

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Peter Davis wrote:

...

Is there some recent information on using XML, and specifically XSL-FO, with ConTeXt? The pages on the contextgarden wiki appear to be 5 years old or more, and even the archive of this list seem pretty sparse on recent information. I'm trying to find the most direct route from XSL-FO to PS or PDF. I'll be generating hundreds or thousands of XSL-FO documents, and would like to process them. Thank you. batik

http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/batik/ -- luigi

Thanks, Luigi. I'm not sure I see the connection, but I'll take a look. -pd

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 7:16 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

On 10-11-2010 12:22, Peter Davis wrote:

...

Is there some recent information on using XML, and specifically XSL-FO, with ConTeXt? The pages on the contextgarden wiki appear to be 5 years old or more, and even the archive of this list seem pretty sparse on recent information.

I'm trying to find the most direct route from XSL-FO to PS or PDF. I'll be generating hundreds or thousands of XSL-FO documents, and would like to process them.

there was never much interest in FO and usually such code only gets better when it's used; I have it on my todo list to rewrite the mkii specific FO processing code in mkiv as it can be done more efficient etc etc but there is not that much incentive ... in projects that I'm involved in we normally go directly from xml to pdf simply because it's faster, gives better results and takes less coding than going the fo-route; and as FO is not that much fun, I'd either need a project or see it as a challenge (btw, it's not that big a deal to rewrite the mkii code to mkiv)

Hans

Thanks, Hans. I can certainly understand that FO has not gotten much attention. In our case, though, this is the XML format we're starting with. It's not a matter of converting other xml to FO. I'd be happy to look at the mkii code, but considering that I'm brand spanking new to ConTeXt, I don't expect to make any great strides there for a while. Is it possible to put a setup inside an xmlsetup? For example, if the xml specifies a page size, can I put a setup for that inside the xmlsetup that handles that element? Thank you, -pd

On 11/13/10 6:03 AM, Renaud AUBIN wrote:

Uh ? Give FOP a try… http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/1.0/index.html Could you describe your target chain ? XML → FO → PDF ?

Actually, I could write some XSLT to convert the XSL-FO into TeX or ConTeXt. But I was thinking it might be beneficial to use ConTeXt to process the XML (XSL-FO) directly ... get it all under one roof, so to speak. Thanks, -pd -- -------- Peter Davis The Tech Curmudgeon - http://www.techcurmudgeon.com Ideas Great and Dumb - http://www.ideasgreatanddumb.com

On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

On 13-11-2010 4:14, Peter Davis wrote:

...

On 11/13/10 6:03 AM, Renaud AUBIN wrote:

...

Uh ? Give FOP a try… http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/1.0/index.html Could you describe your target chain ? XML → FO → PDF ?

Actually, I could write some XSLT to convert the XSL-FO into TeX or ConTeXt. But I was thinking it might be beneficial to use ConTeXt to process the XML (XSL-FO) directly ... get it all under one roof, so to speak.

faster too

Interesting point. I initially assumed it would be faster to do all my XML processing in ConTeXt, but it occurred to me that perhaps using XSLT to or even home-grown XML processing, I could generate a stream of TeX that could be processed while I'm still producing it. So one process might be looking at successive data records and generating TeX for the various pages, and another process could be simultaneously running TeX to typeset those pages. Plausible? Thank you. -pd

Hi, Renaud, In a nutshell, my use is a form of database publishing from two XML files. The first file is *like* XSL-FO, but also contains some namespaced constructs. This XML file is the page template ... it represents the layout, the static portions of the page, and the locations where various "live" data should get plugged in. The second XML contains the live data, extracted from a database. There might be thousands or tens of thousands of records of information to publish. So for each main element in the live data file, we use the template file, but plug in the live data and generate a beautiful, formatted document. The data may contain plain text, text with some formatting, and references to graphics and images in various formats. It definitely needs to support "advanced" typesetting (beautiful paragraphs, tracking and kerning, ligatures, multiple languages, etc.). It needs to support full color (mostly CMYK), most widely used fonts (T1, TT/OT, CID, etc.) It also needs to produce finished pages at a rate of thousands or tens of thousands of pages per minute. TeX has the features I want, but I'm still trying to determine the best way to use it. ConTeXt is particularly attractive for its built-in XML support, simplefonts support, pdfTeX support and minimals packaging, among other things. -pd On 11/14/2010 5:48 PM, Renaud AUBIN wrote:

XSLT is fully adapted to XML/XML(fo or other target schema) since it was the design basis…

My experience is: − good xslt is (relatively) easy to design as soon as you master the underlying data model − xsltproc is REALLY REALLY fast for xslt 1 processing − if you want something smarter, go for java with saxon/xerces, which is performant too…

I'm the devil's advocate but what's your need to use ConTeXt. I have not read all your threads but if you just need: − to produce pdfs from xml data − without advanced typesettings you could use xslt to produce DocBook 5 xml file, include them using , configure your layout with an intermediate xslt + Fo xml config…

Once more, it depends on your original ecosystem and constraints…

If you provide a use case, I should provide a sample if you don't need it within a couple of hours (but a couple of days)…

Best regards,

Renaud

Le 14/11/2010 22:36, Peter Davis a écrit :

...

On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

...

On 13-11-2010 4:14, Peter Davis wrote:

...

On 11/13/10 6:03 AM, Renaud AUBIN wrote:

...

Uh ? Give FOP a try…http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/1.0/index.html Could you describe your target chain ? XML → FO → PDF ?

Actually, I could write some XSLT to convert the XSL-FO into TeX or ConTeXt. But I was thinking it might be beneficial to use ConTeXt to process the XML (XSL-FO) directly ... get it all under one roof, so to speak.

faster too

Interesting point. I initially assumed it would be faster to do all my XML processing in ConTeXt, but it occurred to me that perhaps using XSLT to or even home-grown XML processing, I could generate a stream of TeX that could be processed while I'm still producing it. So one process might be looking at successive data records and generating TeX for the various pages, and another process could be simultaneously running TeX to typeset those pages.

Plausible?

Thank you.

-pd

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___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________

-- -------- Peter Davis The Tech Curmudgeon - http://www.techcurmudgeon.com Ideas Great and Dumb - http://www.ideasgreatanddumb.com