[pdftex] PassiveTeX

[Giuseppe Greco]

Hi Rolf,

> Hi,
> 
> I'm working on a business solution for rather complex reports which have to
> be generated on the fly - not server-based, not in a controlled environment
> (where you can still take a look at the output and make changes before finally
> printing) but at the point-of-sale for the Windows platform.
> 
> For the typesetting part, pdfTeX is my choice. For the templating, I first
> considered a Perl-based solution (the templating toolkit by Andy Wardley) but
> now I discovered the excellence of XML technologies (in my case with MSXML
> 3.0/4.0, the Microsoft XML parser and XSL processor).
> 
> I still have to convince the decision-makers in my company that the TeX
> heaven is a great place although the VB scripting hell is more populated and
> better-known. For that purpose, it would be nice to eliminate the LaTeX code out
> of my XSL files and use XSL-FO instead - with pdfTeX still as a backend, I
> don't seriously consider to switch to Apache FOP or RenderX XEP.
> 
> Is a solution based on PassiveTeX (or with DSSSL and JadeTeX?) as the FO
> processor possible? I'm not familiar with XSL-FO and PassiveTeX at all. So let's
> take the following requirements - could they be met by XSL:Fo and
> PassiveTeX?

Yes, you should proceed as described here below:

1. Generate the FO file with your preferred XSLT processor; I personally
   use xsltproc, so the command would be:

   XML_CATALOG_FILES=your_catalog.cat \
     xsltproc --output your_file.fo your_stylesheet.xsl \
     your_document.xml

2. Then, you can generate the PDF file pdftex/pdflatex as
   usually:

   pdftex --interaction=nonstopmode "&xmltex" your_file.fo
   pdftex --interaction=nonstopmode "&xmltex" your_file.fo

   (the document should be processed twice...)

That is it!

> 
> - in my reports, I have to use the TrueType font of my company
> - I have changed the behaviour of certain LaTeX markups, e.g. the tabbing
> and itemize environment, to meet corporate design rules (things like: ragged
> right, no extra vertical skip between the itemize/tabbing lines and the
> surrounding paragraphs)
> - German hyphenation (with a \hyphenation list)
> - longtable package: at the moment, I don't use it because of certain
> technical problems (changing the rule width \arrayrulewidth within longtable for
> \cline and \hline doesn't behave well) but perhaps I still find a work-around
> and use the package. Would it be possible to define tables in xsl:fo which
> spread over multiple pages, with running heads/footers? Are they supported by
> PassiveTeX?

Actually, PassiveTex has some problems when rendering tables...

> - inclusion of a logo (at the moment, with \pdfximage)

I personally store images in XCF format (the native GIMP format), so all
the layouts composing the images can be restored and edited again,
and again... Of course, before using them in a TeX/LaTeX/XML documents,
I convert them in the appropriate format (EPS/PDF/PNG or GIF) by issuing
commands like these:

XCF -> EPS:
   xcftopnm your_image.xcf | pnmtops -noturn -nosetpage -scale 0.75 \
   your_image.eps

XCF -> PDF:
   xcftopnm your_image.xcf | pnmtops -noturn -nosetpage -scale 0.75 | \
   epstopdf --filter > your_image.pdf

XCF -> PNG:
  xcftopnm your_image.xcf | pnmtopng > your_image.png


> 
> What about the overall performance?

PassiveTeX relies on xmltex (an XML parser written in TeX);
this parser is not so fast, but it is my preferred one...

> 
> Thanks for any advice, experience or hint,

Bye,

Gius_.
> 
> Rolf Dieterich
-- 
----------------------------------------
Giuseppe Greco

::agamura::

phone:  +41 (0)91 604 67 65
mobile: +41 (0)76 390 60 32
email:  giuseppe.greco at agamura.com
web:    www.agamura.com
----------------------------------------