Re: [lmi] notes on using xmlroff

[Vaclav Slavik]

Hi,

On Mon, 2010-01-11 at 21:07 +0000, Greg Chicares wrote:
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.text.xml/browse_thread/thread/ed0c965911ae3a9/2b536641e509bc6b
> | I use XSLT to generate LaTeX code from XML text, and then run pdfLaTeX
> | to produce PDF. I find this is faster, easier to program, and produces
> | better quality typography than any of the XSL:FO methods.
> 
> Does that sound like a worthwhile idea, for the long term?

Generally speaking, using LaTeX for printed output is good. But I have
my doubts about using XSLT of all things to produce TeX code.
Personally, I find any XSLT code barely readable, and (La)TeX is not
well-suited for being generated like this, I'd expect some serious
issues with e.g. whitespace.

I don't think you need TeX's typographic quality either, do you?

> IOW, if we began afresh today with the goal of creating formatted,
> paginated pdf output from text and numbers created in C++, would we
> pick a different path than C++ --> xml --> xslt --> fo --> pdf?

I may be missing something, but why does LMI use XML step in the first
place? Does it serve any purpose other than being XSL:FO input? 

Personally, I'd probably go with direct use of some reporting library
with PDF output, such as ReportLab. ReportLab is for Python; I know
there are some C++ and plenty of Java ones, but have no idea about their
quality.

Regards,
Vaclav