FOP formatting capabilities

["Robinson, Andy" <an...@uk.fid-intl.com>]

I'm evaluating a number of PDF creation utilities for a real-world project
delivering documentation about financial products over the web.
Regrettably, I don't have the time to learn all I need about FOP through
experiment, and the FO doc makes my brain hurt, so I'd be very grateful for
people's experiences.

1. should FOP be trusted for stable production use?  
2. Are there any live examples of apps using it on the web to do PDF in real
time?
3. None of the demos I have seen include any lines.  How good is it at
drawing tables with control over cell border lines and backgrounds?
4. Can images be embedded?  If so, which formats
5. Can it draw vertical or rotated text?
6. Speed:  Can anyone give me some benchmarks or averages from real-world
printing jobs?  For example, I have a two-column, ten page document of dense
8 point text, with several paragraph styles.  On an average PC, would it be
reasonable to get a sub-one-second response?  

I'd also be really grateful for references to nice FOP-created documents
that are visible on the web.

Many thanks,

Andy Robinson

Re: FOP formatting capabilities

[Ulrich Mayring <ul...@denic.de>]

"Robinson, Andy" wrote:
> 
> 3. None of the demos I have seen include any lines.  How good is it at
> drawing tables with control over cell border lines and backgrounds?

There's a bug that will prevent printing PDFs to PostScript printers if
they contain a line.

> 6. Speed:  Can anyone give me some benchmarks or averages from real-world
> printing jobs?  For example, I have a two-column, ten page document of
> dense
> 8 point text, with several paragraph styles.  On an average PC, would it be
> reasonable to get a sub-one-second response?

fop is astonishingly fast IMO, but the speed of your PC is not the
issue, it's the speed of the server.

Ulrich

-- 
Ulrich Mayring
DENIC eG, Systementwicklung

Re: My poor bug

[Fotis Jannidis <fo...@lrz.uni-muenchen.de>]

Jon:
> So, should I have come to this list to tell everybody about the bug?
> and, is the bug service down on apache.org?
xml.apache.org's bugzilla is down. If you have noticed a bug, please post it to the list.
Fotis

Re: FOP formatting capabilities

[Eric SCHAEFFER <es...@posterconseil.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sebastian Rahtz" <se...@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>
To: <fo...@xml.apache.org>
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2000 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: FOP formatting capabilities


> Robinson, Andy writes:
>  > 4. Can images be embedded?  If so, which formats
> the usual bitmap formats

For now, Gif (with transparency) and Jpeg.
You can use Jimi (from Sun, but not more supported) to embedded PNG and
other formats. We will use (soon I hope) JAI and support alpha transparency.

Eric.

>
> Sebastian Rahtz
>

RE: My poor bug - list bug when extending over page boundary

[Jon Mountjoy <mo...@netcomuk.co.uk>]

Well, Fotis asked for it so here is the bug again.

Hi,

Latest build - from CVS.  (By the way, the download at site
says version .13 but when you run it, it says, 0.12.2)

If you render a list, which has a sublist (that is, an
<fo:list-item> has as its body a <fo:list-block>), and that
sub-list spills over a page boundary when rendered, then the
second and subsequent elements of the list loose their indentation.

In other words, if you have this:
 - a
 - b
 - c
    -- 1
    -- 2
    -- 3
    -- 4

And a page-break occured between the items 1 and 2 of the sublist,
then the second page seems to be rendered like this:
    -- 2
 -- 3
 -- 4

See the attachment for a concrete example.  If you create the pdf, you will
also see the bullet points go all over the place (Embedded in the sub-list
text actually)

Jon

My poor bug

[Jon Personal <mo...@netcomuk.co.uk>]

Hi Guys,

Some time ago (last week :-) ) I posted up with a bug in the list
rendering - but nobody has replied either way to the posting.

In addition, if one tries to go to:
http://xml.apache.org/bugs/
I get:
You don't have permission to access /bugs/ on this server
As I have done for a week now.

So, should I have come to this list to tell everybody about the bug?
and, is the bug service down on apache.org?

Regards,
Jon

Re: FOP formatting capabilities

[Sebastian Rahtz <se...@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>]

Robinson, Andy writes:
 > 1. should FOP be trusted for stable production use?  

No. Would anyone here claim that?

 > 2. Are there any live examples of apps using it on the web to do PDF in real
 > time?
I do not think so. others can maybe offer something?

 > 3. None of the demos I have seen include any lines.  How good is it at
 > drawing tables with control over cell border lines and backgrounds?
not bad, but not perfect

 > 4. Can images be embedded?  If so, which formats
the usual bitmap formats

 > 6. Speed:  Can anyone give me some benchmarks or averages from real-world
 > printing jobs?  For example, I have a two-column, ten page document of dense
 > 8 point text, with several paragraph styles.  On an average PC, would it be
 > reasonable to get a sub-one-second response?  

FOP does not do multiple column text, unless my memory is failing
me. And I would not expect sub-one-second. It depends how it is set up;
if the Java virtual machine does not have to restarted, and the XSL
stylesheet (if thats how you create the FO) is compiled, I would
suggest more like 1-2 seconds for the 10 page document.

If the game is "documentation about financial products over the web",
I would seriously question whether PDF is the right delivery medium,
personally. Can you identify the unique features of PDF that you need?

Sebastian Rahtz