FO Acceptance

[Calvin Low <cl...@modeln.com>]

Hi,

I'm evaluating FOP for commercial production-code use. The technology seems useful if a little raw. We're more concerned with its acceptance.

Does anyone have an idea as to how widespread its usage is?

Is it mainly used for internal applications? Small vs large scale applications? Is it in production?

How much of its functionality has been exercised in a production environment? Have you run into annoyances (font support?) or insumountable problems?

Many thanks in advance!

Re: FO Acceptance

[Arved Sandstrom <Ar...@chebucto.ns.ca>]

At 08:21 PM 7/24/00 +0100, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>Calvin Low writes:
> > Is it mainly used for internal applications? Small vs large scale
> > applications? Is it in production?
> > 
> > How much of its functionality has been exercised in a production
> > environment? Have you run into annoyances (font support?) or
> > insumountable problems?
>
>It depends on what you want to produce. If you don't need eg
>full H&J, or multiple columns, or any fonts outside the standard 13,
>then you are probably in clover.
>
>But the real killer is that FOP is in a period of continual
>development (and quite right too!). It is hard to see how one could
>recommend it in serious production use until it reaches a stable "1.0"
>state. It would probably be fair to estimate that this is unlikely to
>happen until some time in the winter.
>
>Sebastian
>
This is exactly the way I would see it myself. A 1.0 stable version late 
this year. The XSL spec is still something of a moving target, and therefore 
so is FOP.

I might add that absolutely no efforts (other than an initial clean design 
from James Tauber, and efforts to maintain that vision) have gone into 
performance tweaking. As such, size of output PDF would be unsatisfactory 
for production, and we are currently relatively unconcerned with speed.

Regards, Arved Sandstrom

Senior Developer
e-plicity.com (www.e-plicity.com)
Halifax, Nova Scotia
"B2B Wireless in Canada's Ocean Playground"

Re: FO Acceptance

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

Calvin Low writes:
 > Is it mainly used for internal applications? Small vs large scale
 > applications? Is it in production?
 > 
 > How much of its functionality has been exercised in a production
 > environment? Have you run into annoyances (font support?) or
 > insumountable problems?

It depends on what you want to produce. If you don't need eg
full H&J, or multiple columns, or any fonts outside the standard 13,
then you are probably in clover.

But the real killer is that FOP is in a period of continual
development (and quite right too!). It is hard to see how one could
recommend it in serious production use until it reaches a stable "1.0"
state. It would probably be fair to estimate that this is unlikely to
happen until some time in the winter.

Sebastian