Limitations of FOP

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

I am including a new section into the FOP readme describing the limitations of FOP 
compared to the XSL-FO spec and including basic working examples. Until now I have 
the following entries: 

list-block (only child fo:list-item allowed)

Padding (only for blocks, no extra space)

table (restrictions on the basic form of the table) (That's where the recent example came 
from)

margin-top, -botton etc. (only on pages and regions)

Anything else? What about display-graphic?

BTW: I am still looking for descriptions of platform specific problems with compiling and 
running FOP + workarounds, if you have any. 

Fotis

Re: Limitations of FOP

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

Hi, Fotis

Here's a basic blurb to put in now.

*****

1. Running FOP on MacOS

Ensure that you have a recent MRJ, and that you have downloaded and
unpacked the XP and SAX distributions. The xp.jar and sax.jar files work
as is on MacOS.

Drag the FOP jarfile onto the JBindery icon. When the first dialog
appears, type "org.apache.fop.apps.CommandLine" in the "Class name" field.
Using UNIX syntax, type the names of the input formatting-object file and
the output PDF in the "Optional parameters" field.

Click on the Classpath icon. To add the xp.jar and sax.jar files, click
the "Add .zip file" button, navigate to the file in question, and click
Open.

Once both are added (the FOP jarfile will already be in the list), click
Run. A "stdout" window will appear and display FOP runtime messages.

2. Compiling FOP on MacOS

We strongly recommend the use of Codewarrior Java. This Readme will
contain a link to more information in the near future.

*****

Regards, Arved

Re: Limitations of FOP

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

> I guess the question is, how much info are you willing to include in the
> Readme? Because I'd give you 2 or 3 paras on running FOP on MacOS. 
That would be fine. 
> As far
> as compiling it goes, all I think we should say is that we recommend the
> use of Codewarrior Java, and point the person to a set of HTML pages that
> I'm preparing on XML on MacOS. 
Having a link there pointing to your description is a good idea, especially if you are 
putting this up anyway. 

I am just writing the section on limitations of FOP for the readme, will brush up the 
stylesheets too and hope to put all this on the xml.apache.org server at Friday. As 
updates of the server are not easy at the moment, I will wait for your text, if you don't tell 
me otherwise. 

Fotis

Re: Limitations of FOP

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

On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Fotis Jannidis wrote:

> I am including a new section into the FOP readme describing the limitations of FOP 
> compared to the XSL-FO spec and including basic working examples. Until now I have 
> the following entries: 
> 
> Anything else? What about display-graphic?
>
Simple-link, once it gets operational, will have some restrictions also.
I'll forward them at that time.
 
> BTW: I am still looking for descriptions of platform specific problems with compiling and 
> running FOP + workarounds, if you have any. 
> 
PPC Linux is fine. As regards MacOS, that's a bit of a poser. There are
_no_ platform-specific problems or workarounds that relate specifically to
FOP, either for running it or compiling it.

However, someone with a Mac might stumble on FOP as the first thing they
want to try, in which case things will be non-trivial.

I guess the question is, how much info are you willing to include in the
Readme? Because I'd give you 2 or 3 paras on running FOP on MacOS. As far
as compiling it goes, all I think we should say is that we recommend the
use of Codewarrior Java, and point the person to a set of HTML pages that
I'm preparing on XML on MacOS. It gets lengthy, and as I say, nothing that
you end up doing is peculiar to FOP - you have to do the same things for
other Java distros, too.

Let me know.

Arved