[pdftex] PassiveTeX

[Sebastian Rahtz]

On Sat, 2003-03-15 at 11:13, Rolf Dieterich wrote:
> Hi Giuseppe,
> 
> in my case, the FO processor would have to produce an XSL stylesheet,
> something like
> 
>    \begin{tabular}[t]{p{4cm}p{5.5cm}p{5.5cm}}%

you'll have to redesign this entirely. XSL FO works at the cell level,
not the column.


> because there are still substitutions which have to be done during runtime.
> So do all my xsl-statements in the .fo file have to be escaped in some way or
> is it possible that the FO processor doesn't touch the xsl namespace at all?

I am not sure what you are getting at here

> Concerning the TeX parser, performance wouldn't be that important in my case
> because the FO processing isn't done during runtime. But I ask myself if a
> FO processor which produces TeX code has to (should) heavily rely on xmltex.

no FO processor produces TeX code. 

> Sure, thus it's neatly integrated within the TDS structure. On the other hand,
> you don't have the flexibility in using the XML parser of your choice and
> you have to have a TeX system installed on every machine on which you do the FO
> processing.

right. the other FO engines might suit you better

> I have no idea, it's all still brainstorming, but I wonder if it wouldn't be
> possible to implement the FO processing as a pure XSL transformation (with
> an XSL stylesheet

transform to PDF? conceivable, just, but very very hard
> 
> On IBM alphaworks there is TeXML which consists of a DTD and a Java program
> which produces TeX code from an XML document which conforms to this DTD. At
> first glance, it seemed unnecessary to me to use another document style. But
> for my workflow it could make sense to use it (or to develop another?) instead
> of complex XSL-FO.

forget TeXML. it was and is a dead end. your choices are

 - generate LaTeX code and execute it
 - generate XSL FO code and execute it using PassiveTeX or another of
the FO processirs
 - process arbitrary XML of your choice with xmltex or ConTeXt

> solution yet. But it starts getting off-topic on this ML. The only excusion
> I have is that at the end of all I want to produce PDF with pdfTeX -;

my recommendation - look at ConTeXt. it has the most reliable and
advanced macro programming for processing XML

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Sebastian Rahtz      OUCS Information Manager
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431