Hi John,
Thanks for your reply.
> There are several problems using both FOP and PassiveTeX for PDF
> formatting of Docbook. Using either tool will result in some odd format
> errors, depending on what you're formatting. My experience is that if
> you have simple needs, and relatively short documents, then FOP will
> suffice. However, if you are prepared to work around some of
> PassiveTex's formatting issues (by modifying the XSL, the PassiveTeX
> macros, or the Docbook source) then a much better-looking output file
> will result. Personally, although I've had to work around a lot of
> issues with PassiveTeX, I much prefer its output to that of FOP. Over
> time, that opinion may change as FOP becomes a better product.
Thanks for the tips. I'll give both a go. I was really looking for a more out
of the box approach though. Is there somewhere one can find a list of the
shortcommings and perhaps workarounds for them?
>
> When formatting tables, it's helpful to know that cell and row spanning
> don't work so well in PassiveTeX, and neither do relative column widths.
> Simple tables, however, can be fairly easily accomplished, by not using
> spans, and by specifying absolute table widths. If you have border
> issues, then those can be worked around too, with a little trickery.
> Here is an example of a simple table in one of the PDF documents that my
> organization produces:
>
One of the problems I had with the PassiveTex output was that the left and
right frame borders were always blank. Is there a work around for that?
Thanks for the example. I'll give it a go.
> It should also be noted that it is possible to avoid the use of tables
> for many cases in FO-generated output, as FO provides several other
> formatting options for cases that would require a table in HTML, so you
> may want to investigate using FO block-level formatting (of things such
> as variablelist for example) to see if that would meet your needs in
> this case.
One of the things I want to do is have a block of text on the left, and an
image on the right of the page.
ie.....
-------------------------------------------------
| | |
| | |
| Text here | image here |
| | |
| | |
|-------------------------------|----------------|
I tried to do it didn't really work with the PassiveTex PDF output.
Can acheive the same thing without the use of tables?
Thanks for your advice,
Jason
--
Jason Lewis
-------------------------------------------------
please note my new email address
