fop minimum requirements

[Clay Leeds <cl...@medata.com>]

FOP's minimum requirements[1]:

> System Requirements
>
> The following software must be installed:
> 	• 	Java 1.2.x or later Runtime Environment.
> 	• 	FOP. The FOP distribution includes all libraries that you will 
> need to run a basic FOP installation. These can be found in the 
> xml-fop/lib directory. These libraries include the following:
> 	◦ 	 Apache Xerces-J for XML parsing. You can use other XML parsers 
> which support SAX and DOM.
> 	◦ 	Apache Xalan-J, an XSLT processor.
> 	◦ 	Apache Batik, an SVG library.

However, according to J.Pietschmann[2]:

> Chris Bowditch wrote:
> > I did a quick search of the archives and found the thread that 
> decrees
> > 1.1 will no longer be supported and the minimum JDK is 1.2.
>
> Acutually I doubt FOP 0.20.5 will run completely in an 1.2 environment.
> The binary is compiled with 1.4.1, and I vaguely remember compiling
> problems already for 0.20.4 on 1.2.
>
> J.PIetschmann

It would be nice to *know* (and post on our site) the "real" 
requirements for running FOP. If there are different minimum 
requirements for fop-20.4 and fop-0.20.5, this information should be on 
the FOP site. fop-users looking to fill their needs shouldn't have to 
download the latest version only to find it doesn't work under their 
lowly JRE.

Web Maestro Clay

p.s. On second thought, maybe that'll be something I'll figure out 
myself (although it would be better if the legwork were already done! 
:-D)

[1]
http://xml.apache.org/fop/running.html

[2]
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fop-dev&m=107353819024636&w=2

Re: fop minimum requirements

["J.Pietschmann" <j3...@yahoo.de>]

Clay Leeds wrote:
> ...but what you're saying, is that there should not be problems for 
> *binary* versions--only if users want to build from src themselves under 
> 1.2.

Well, "no problems reported" doesn't mean "no problems". There
may be well hidden problems in rarely used functionality, and
people stumbling over them just stopped using FOP.
It's certainly better to check.

J.Pietschmann

Re: fop minimum requirements

[Clay Leeds <cl...@medata.com>]

On Mar 3, 2004, at 1:23 PM, J.Pietschmann wrote:
> Clay Leeds wrote:
>> p.s. On second thought, maybe that'll be something I'll figure out 
>> myself (although it would be better if the legwork were already done! 
>> :-D)
>
> I don't have intentions to install a 1.2 on my smallish
> and almost full HD. There were, however, *zero* complaints
> about problems running 0.20.4 or 0.20.5. There were some
> poeple stuck with an oldish IBM 1.1.8 (or even 1.0.x) JDK
> on some exotic platforms, therefore if there were problems
> for typical use cases, I expect at least one to report it.
> Users of the precompiled binaries wont necessarily notice
> any problems though.
>
> J.Pietschmann

It's certainly a relief that there were no reported problems. I was 
concerned with this portion of your response:

>> Acutually I doubt FOP 0.20.5 will run completely in an 1.2 
>> environment.
>> The binary is compiled with 1.4.1, and I vaguely remember compiling
>> problems already for 0.20.4 on 1.2.

...but what you're saying, is that there should not be problems for 
*binary* versions--only if users want to build from src themselves 
under 1.2.

If I understand things correctly, my response is "Sounds good!"

Web Maestro Clay

Re: fop minimum requirements

["J.Pietschmann" <j3...@yahoo.de>]

Clay Leeds wrote:
> p.s. On second thought, maybe that'll be something I'll figure out 
> myself (although it would be better if the legwork were already done! :-D)

I don't have intentions to install a 1.2 on my smallish
and almost full HD. There were, however, *zero* complaints
about problems running 0.20.4 or 0.20.5. There were some
poeple stuck with an oldish IBM 1.1.8 (or even 1.0.x) JDK
on some exotic platforms, therefore if there were problems
for typical use cases, I expect at least one to report it.
Users of the precompiled binaries wont necessarily notice
any problems though.

J.Pietschmann