docbook-apps

  • 1.  FO processors

    Posted 06-06-2009 06:38
    Hi,

    I don't know if this is a little bit off-topic.

    We are currently using Apache FOP and like to switch to a processor
    that is more powerful (e.g. auto-column size table handling).

    Currently I am investigating:
    - XSL Formatter (Antenna House)
    - XEP (RenderX)

    Do you know more processors worth a look? And of course (I know Bob
    uses XEP too) have anybody of you experience with one of the above?

    --
    Cheers,
    Tobias


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  • 2.  Re: [docbook-apps] FO processors

    Posted 06-06-2009 08:38
    Hi Tobias,

    On Samstag, 6. Juni 2009, Tobias Anstett [k15t.com] wrote:
    >
    >
    > We are currently using Apache FOP and like to switch to a processor
    > that is more powerful (e.g. auto-column size table handling).
    >
    > Currently I am investigating:
    > - XSL Formatter (Antenna House)
    > - XEP (RenderX)
    >
    > Do you know more processors worth a look? And of course (I know Bob
    > uses XEP too) have anybody of you experience with one of the above?

    Well, my company uses XEP and we like it very much. It does all the things
    of the FO specification pretty well and is reasonably fast (although
    written in Java).

    In the past we've tried Antenna House XSL Formatter (AXF) too. Although it
    offers a native Linux port, is faster than XEP, offers more options, but
    it was a bit too expensive for us. Unfortunatly, from my observations,
    AXF was also not as easy to configure than XEP. Maybe that has changed
    now, but it was not as intuitive than XEP.

    If you have to render asian languages, AXF seems to make a better job than
    XEP. Well, AXF is written by a Japanese company that explains it. AXF
    supports SVG and MathML whereas XEP supports only the former.
    Unfortunatly, for AXF, you have to pay extra for the SVG and MathML
    modules, whereas XEP supports SVG out of the box.


    Of course there are other (commercial) formatters than the two above. I
    never tried it as most of them run on Windows only. For an overview, find
    more information at the DocBook Wiki, section "FO engines"[1].


    Hope that helps, :-)
    Tom


    -------
    [1] http://wiki.docbook.org/topic/DocBookPublishingTools

    --
    Thomas Schraitle



  • 3.  RE: [docbook-apps] FO processors

    Posted 06-06-2009 16:52
    We've used XEP for the past eight years or so and have been very happy
    with it. We also translate our docs into Japanese. While I'm not
    qualified to evaluate the Japanese output, I can say that our
    localization vendors have been satisfied with the results. It wouldn't
    surprise me if Antenna House's formatter is better at Asian languages
    since, as Tom mentioned, it's produced by a Japanese company (for
    example, I understand that knowing where to break a line in Japanese is
    tricky to do programmatically; perhaps Antenna house does better in that
    respect), but certainly XEP can produce acceptable results.

    There's a white paper that Eliot Kimber wrote about fo renderers that's
    fairly old by now, but perhaps would give you some ideas of what to
    consider when comparing them, especially with respect to
    internationalization:
    http://www.innodata-isogen.com/knowledge_center/white_papers/xslfo_print
    _wp (you have to create a free account to download the pdf).

    David


    Original Message


  • 4.  Re: [docbook-apps] FO processors

    Posted 06-06-2009 22:19
    O'Reilly uses Antenna House. The initial use case (a number of years
    ago) demanded maximum speed, which favored AH over XEP (at the time).
    We've been generally happy with AH, so we haven't re-evaluated. I
    suspect you'd be happy with either, but your choice may depend on
    language support or other features (as above).


    HTH,
    Keith



  • 5.  Re: [docbook-apps] FO processors

    Posted 06-06-2009 23:11
    Thanks a lot for the input so far :-)

    I will integrate both of them into our product and do some
    benchmarking. From the architectural point of view XEP fits best,
    because we are developing purely in Java and serving customers using a
    lot of different systems.

    Cheers,
    Tobias


    On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 6:51 PM, David Cramer<dcramer@motive.com> wrote:
    > We've used XEP for the past eight years or so and have been very happy
    > with it. We also translate our docs into Japanese. While I'm not
    > qualified to evaluate the Japanese output, I can say that our
    > localization vendors have been satisfied with the results. It wouldn't
    > surprise me if Antenna House's formatter is better at Asian languages
    > since, as Tom mentioned, it's produced by a Japanese company (for
    > example, I understand that knowing where to break a line in Japanese is
    > tricky to do programmatically; perhaps Antenna house does better in that
    > respect), but certainly XEP can produce acceptable results.
    >
    > There's a white paper that Eliot Kimber wrote about fo renderers that's
    > fairly old by now, but perhaps would give you some ideas of what to
    > consider when comparing them, especially with respect to
    > internationalization:
    > http://www.innodata-isogen.com/knowledge_center/white_papers/xslfo_print
    > _wp (you have to create a free account to download the pdf).
    >
    > David
    >
    >
    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: [docbook-apps] FO processors

    Posted 06-08-2009 13:00
    We use XEP and are pretty happy with it.


    Original Message


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