[pdftex] PassiveTeX

[The Thanh Han]

Hi,

can passivetex handle other encodings than latin1? A while ago I
tred to use passivetex to convert some docbook (vietnamese,
encoded as UTF8) to pdf, but without success.

Thanh

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 10:28:10PM +0100, Giuseppe Greco wrote:
> 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
> ----------------------------------------
> 
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