[pdftex] Re: PassiveTeX

[Thomas Schrader]

Hi,

Rolf Dieterich wrote:

> I'm working on a business solution for rather complex reports which have to
> be generated on the fly - not server-based ...

> For the typesetting part, pdfTeX is my choice ...

This certainly is somewhat hairy to control but worked well for me, too.

> ... For that purpose, it would be nice to eliminate the LaTeX code out
> of my XSL files and use XSL-FO instead

IMHO this might work, as long as your layout is simple and you only
need to breakup some data flow vertically but I found it very hard to set
up complex tabular layouts with dynamic headers and margins, diverse counters,
etc. with FO. You might want to have that in advanced reporting.

I cannot recommend to do any layouting calculations in XSLT. Some XSLT
libraries are extremely fast in processing well setup, lean templates but
expect conditions, loops and the like slowing down everything several orders
of magnitude. TeX can do all this much faster.

Moreover, I couldn't find advanced needs satisfied in any of the passive
FO renderers.

Before you reinvent a new typesetting system you might want to have a look
at context; it is somewhat more controllable than latex and meant for complex
layouting. Direct processing of XML is possible.

For me, it suffices to do all data analysis tasks, reordering and the like in
Perl and finally write out lean, easy processable XML. This I transform into
pure latex by lean, fast XSLT templates and typeset it with pdflatex which
I wrapped by a perl class controlling the input and all logging. This is not
as elegant as context but if you already know latex...

> What about the overall performance?

Somewhat time is needed for data analysis and the XML generation, which I do
by perl widgets. XSL transformation time can quickly get out of control (see
above). Gross is pdflatex runtime.


Good luck

Thomas Schrader

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