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Posted to fop-dev@xmlgraphics.apache.org by Jonathan Levinson <Jo...@intersystems.com> on 2009/09/14 21:32:25 UTC

Volunteering to work on FOP development

Hi,
 
My management has asked me to volunteer to help fix FOP bugs and add FOP
enhancements.  I'm not yet familiar with FOP internals though I've read
your design documents.
 
I work for InterSystems: www.intersystems.com
<http://www.intersystems.com> .  I'm responsible for the InterSystems
reporting engine: ZEN Reports.  ZEN Reports generates XSLT to transform
XML to XSL-FO and uses RenderX XEP, FOP, and Antenna House for rendering
engines.  
 
I have to start somewhere and a question I have is this: what would be a
good "starter bug" or enhancement for me to work on?  Can anyone give me
any pointers on how to get started?

 

Thanks!
  
Best Regards,

Jonathan S. Levinson

Senior Software Developer

Object Group

InterSystems

617-621-0600

 


RE: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by sp...@leverkruid.eu.
Sounds promising. Simon

Quoting Jonathan Levinson <Jo...@intersystems.com>:

> I'll forward your e-mail to management and tell them there are some
> license agreements we need to sign.
>
> We are an international company, and need to support non-Western
> documents including Greek, Thai and Chinese, amongst many others.  We
> have technical people at work in every area of the globe.
>
> Best Regards,
> Jonathan S. Levinson
> Senior Software Developer
> Object Group
> InterSystems
> 617-621-0600
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Simon Pepping [mailto:spepping@leverkruid.eu]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 3:49 PM
> To: fop-dev@xmlgraphics.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Volunteering to work on FOP development
>
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 03:32:25PM -0400, Jonathan Levinson wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> My management has asked me to volunteer to help fix FOP bugs and add
> FOP
>> enhancements.  I'm not yet familiar with FOP internals though I've
> read
>> your design documents.
>
> That is good news indeed. Thanks to Intersystems for this
> contribution.
>
> Note that you need to sign an Individual Contributor License Agreement
> (ICLA), and most conveniently your company needs to sign a Corporate
> Contributor License Agreement (CCLA), see
> http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas, before FOP or any other ASF
> project can accept your code contributions.
>
> One area in which FOP needs more work is the compliance with the FO
> spec, versions 1.0 and 1.1, see
> http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/compliance.html.
>
> Another area where FOP needs more work is support for non-Western
> documents. I do not know where the problems are, but it probably does
> not work right now. Ideally, we would have contributors from regions
> with such problems.
>
> Regards, Simon
>
> --
> Simon Pepping
> home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu
>



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Re: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by Vincent Hennebert <vh...@gmail.com>.
Hi,

It may also be interesting to have a look at ICU4J [1]. I think this
dependency will be necessary anyway if we are serious about implementing
complex scripts. There may be stuff there that would avoid us
re-inventing the wheel.

[1] http://site.icu-project.org/

Vincent


spepping leverkruid eu wrote:
>> Arabic support is very important for us.
>> I looked in nabble for Sebastian's post that would allow FOP to work with
>> Arabic, but was unable to find his post, though I found a reference to it,
>> with a no longer valid hyper-link.
> 
> This is a link to his message:
> http://markmail.org/message/qu534sfte3xaaosb#query:sebastian%20weber%20arabic+page:1+mid:tbj7vyt56wim4bfj+state:results,
> but the link to his work is no longer valid.
> 
> Kia Teymourian also worked on Arabic support in FOP, and his work is
> available at http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~kiat/fop/.
> 
> Regards, Simon
> 
> 
> 

Re: Support for Arabic in FOP

Posted by Jeremias Maerki <de...@jeremias-maerki.ch>.
Prakash, I think you can safely remove the mirroring in the CTM. It's
definitely not the right thing to do for rl-tb. However, please check
the test cases in test/layoutengine/standard-testcases which probably
contain checks for the CTM. These will need to be changed.

Please try to contact the original author of the changes you picked up.
If we can get hold of him, we can probably get the necessary license
clearing from him. If his changes add considerable new code and
functionality, we'll need a ICLA [1] of him in the ASF's records at the
very least. The same applies to you if you add more than just a few
lines of code.

[1] http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas

I think it's great that there's motion once more in the area of Arabic
script. Many have talked about it (or requested it) but so far nobody
followed through to the end. Please keep in mind that most (if not all)
of the existing committers don't have knowledge about Arabic script so
it's difficult for us to recognize whether a result is right or wrong.
So I think it's going to be important to have some documentation (for
example on the Wiki) on the topic. Some images that illustrate the
results will be helpful. Also, our layout engine test suite should get
some test cases for Arabic script which serve as regression tests. That
way we can slowly build knowledge about non-latin scripts and avoid
accidentally breaking working code after any such functionality has been
added.

I know we may be asking a lot, so thanks a lot in advance for your
patience and persistence.

On 30.09.2009 14:27:33 Prakash sen wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>    I am not sure on the licensing part as sebastian did some changes in FOP
> code and he provided me the jars. And as per what i had checked those jar
> print arabic correctly. 
> Possibly he will only be able to answer and I am nots ure whether the change
> was made keeping FOP standards. He was planning to do bidi algorithm, no
> idea whether he worked on it later and whether he contribuited the below
> change to FOP. 
> 
> Below were his comments - 
> If I set the writing-mode to rl-tb my text is flipped vertical. This happens 
> because the CTM class rotates the transformation matrix for rendering 
> according to the writing mode. If I want to write right-to-left this has 
> nothing to do with mirroring of cause and I disabled it, because I want to 
> print arabic text. So what is the purpose of mirroring in rl-tb 
> writing-mode? What errors will appear if I disable the CTM.getWMctm() 
> function that does the mirroring according to the writing-mode?
> I achived printing (pdf) arabic text after some weeks of work ignoring any 
> xsl:fo recommendations. The most things I did in the TextLayoutManager. Now 
> I'm thinking about implementing it according to the recommendations and the 
> BIDI algorithm.
> 
> Hi Prakash,
> you can download the version of FOP that I use to print Arabic script from
> www.anneundsebp.de/fop/fop.html
> 
> I hope it works for you. Unfortunately I don't understand Arabic but I know
> that there are still some problems with the type setting. Maybe you can
> inform me about bugs you'll find.
> I'll add some explanations and the source code in a few days.
> 
> Regards
> Sebastian
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Volunteering-to-work-on-FOP-development-tp25442059p25680065.html
> Sent from the FOP - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.




Jeremias Maerki


RE: Support for Arabic in FOP

Posted by Sérgio Lopes <sl...@iportalmais.pt>.
Hi Prakash, 

I need fop to be able to handle arabic text. I tried to generate a PDF file
with the Sebastian fop code, but the arabic text is not correctly shaped. I
must be doing something wrong...
Can you please send me an example?

Thanks in advance.

best regards,
Sérgio Lopes



Prakash sen wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>    I am not sure on the licensing part as sebastian did some changes in
> FOP code and he provided me the jars. And as per what i had checked those
> jar print arabic correctly. 
> Possibly he will only be able to answer and I am nots ure whether the
> change was made keeping FOP standards. He was planning to do bidi
> algorithm, no idea whether he worked on it later and whether he
> contribuited the below change to FOP. 
> 
> Below were his comments - 
> If I set the writing-mode to rl-tb my text is flipped vertical. This
> happens 
> because the CTM class rotates the transformation matrix for rendering 
> according to the writing mode. If I want to write right-to-left this has 
> nothing to do with mirroring of cause and I disabled it, because I want to 
> print arabic text. So what is the purpose of mirroring in rl-tb 
> writing-mode? What errors will appear if I disable the CTM.getWMctm() 
> function that does the mirroring according to the writing-mode?
> I achived printing (pdf) arabic text after some weeks of work ignoring any 
> xsl:fo recommendations. The most things I did in the TextLayoutManager.
> Now 
> I'm thinking about implementing it according to the recommendations and
> the 
> BIDI algorithm.
> 
> Hi Prakash,
> you can download the version of FOP that I use to print Arabic script from
> www.anneundsebp.de/fop/fop.html
> 
> I hope it works for you. Unfortunately I don't understand Arabic but I
> know
> that there are still some problems with the type setting. Maybe you can
> inform me about bugs you'll find.
> I'll add some explanations and the source code in a few days.
> 
> Regards
> Sebastian
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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RE: Support for Arabic in FOP

Posted by sebp <se...@hmedia.de>.
Hi,
I cannot sign the license because not all the work is mine. I've uploaded it
again here: http://www.hmedia.de/wiki/doku.php?id=forum:foparabic
The classes in the intl package are free available in the internet but under
other licenses. I think all the changes in the org.apache.fop.* packages are
my 'intellectual property'. So I could sign the contributor license for
these changes, if needed. But as Jeremias already said, the things I did are
not correct (e.g. mirroring in the CTM class or whatever). Maybe its ok to
take my stuff as a starting point and implement it in the right way.
Good Luck. Sebastian
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RE: Support for Arabic in FOP

Posted by sp...@leverkruid.eu.
Quoting Prakash sen <pr...@gmail.com>:

>
> Hi,
>
>    I am not sure on the licensing part as sebastian did some changes in FOP
> code and he provided me the jars. And as per what i had checked those jar
> print arabic correctly.
> Possibly he will only be able to answer and I am nots ure whether the change
> was made keeping FOP standards. He was planning to do bidi algorithm, no
> idea whether he worked on it later and whether he contribuited the below
> change to FOP.

He did not commit any change to FOP.

Simon


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RE: Support for Arabic in FOP

Posted by Prakash sen <pr...@gmail.com>.
Hi,

   I am not sure on the licensing part as sebastian did some changes in FOP
code and he provided me the jars. And as per what i had checked those jar
print arabic correctly. 
Possibly he will only be able to answer and I am nots ure whether the change
was made keeping FOP standards. He was planning to do bidi algorithm, no
idea whether he worked on it later and whether he contribuited the below
change to FOP. 

Below were his comments - 
If I set the writing-mode to rl-tb my text is flipped vertical. This happens 
because the CTM class rotates the transformation matrix for rendering 
according to the writing mode. If I want to write right-to-left this has 
nothing to do with mirroring of cause and I disabled it, because I want to 
print arabic text. So what is the purpose of mirroring in rl-tb 
writing-mode? What errors will appear if I disable the CTM.getWMctm() 
function that does the mirroring according to the writing-mode?
I achived printing (pdf) arabic text after some weeks of work ignoring any 
xsl:fo recommendations. The most things I did in the TextLayoutManager. Now 
I'm thinking about implementing it according to the recommendations and the 
BIDI algorithm.

Hi Prakash,
you can download the version of FOP that I use to print Arabic script from
www.anneundsebp.de/fop/fop.html

I hope it works for you. Unfortunately I don't understand Arabic but I know
that there are still some problems with the type setting. Maybe you can
inform me about bugs you'll find.
I'll add some explanations and the source code in a few days.

Regards
Sebastian











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RE: Support for Arabic in FOP

Posted by sp...@leverkruid.eu.
Licensing is not that easy. The ASF requires that the code be  
submitted under a Contributor License Agreement, see  
http://www.apache.org/licenses/. Even under more liberal regimes,  
having no license would not work, because there is nothing that states  
that it is open source.

Simon

Quoting Prakash sen <pr...@gmail.com>:

> Thank you for your kind offer.
> What license applies to the jars?
>
> Best Regards,
> Jonathan S. Levinson
> Senior Software Developer
> Object Group
> InterSystems
> 617-621-0600
>
>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>>    I am not sure on what changes sebastian had made in the source
> code,
>> but i do have the jar files.  If needed i can send them with some
> sample
>> example.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Prakash Sen.
>
> Hi,
>
>    I dont think there is any license for it... Simply we can use it as it is
> opensource..
> I hope it helps everyone..
>
> Regards,
> Prakash Sen.


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RE: Support for Arabic in FOP

Posted by Prakash sen <pr...@gmail.com>.


Thank you for your kind offer.
What license applies to the jars?

Best Regards,
Jonathan S. Levinson
Senior Software Developer
Object Group
InterSystems
617-621-0600


-----Original Message-----
From: Prakash sen [mailto:prakash.sen@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 1:13 PM
To: fop-dev@xmlgraphics.apache.org
Subject: RE: Volunteering to work on FOP development




Simon Pepping @ Home wrote:
> 
>> Arabic support is very important for us.
>> I looked in nabble for Sebastian's post that would allow FOP to work
with
>> Arabic, but was unable to find his post, though I found a reference
to
>> it,
>> with a no longer valid hyper-link.
> 
> This is a link to his message:
>
http://markmail.org/message/qu534sfte3xaaosb#query:sebastian%20weber%20a
rabic+page:1+mid:tbj7vyt56wim4bfj+state:results,
> but the link to his work is no longer valid.
> 
> Kia Teymourian also worked on Arabic support in FOP, and his work is
> available at http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~kiat/fop/.
> 
> Regards, Simon
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
>    I am not sure on what changes sebastian had made in the source
code,
> but i do have the jar files.  If needed i can send them with some
sample
> example. 
> 
> Regards,
> Prakash Sen.
> 
> 
> 

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http://www.nabble.com/Volunteering-to-work-on-FOP-development-tp25442059
p25512296.html
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Hi,

   I dont think there is any license for it... Simply we can use it as it is
opensource..
I hope it helps everyone..

Regards,
Prakash Sen.
-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Volunteering-to-work-on-FOP-development-tp25442059p25516658.html
Sent from the FOP - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


RE: Support for Arabic in FOP

Posted by Jonathan Levinson <Jo...@intersystems.com>.
Thank you for your kind offer.
What license applies to the jars?

Best Regards,
Jonathan S. Levinson
Senior Software Developer
Object Group
InterSystems
617-621-0600


-----Original Message-----
From: Prakash sen [mailto:prakash.sen@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 1:13 PM
To: fop-dev@xmlgraphics.apache.org
Subject: RE: Volunteering to work on FOP development




Simon Pepping @ Home wrote:
> 
>> Arabic support is very important for us.
>> I looked in nabble for Sebastian's post that would allow FOP to work
with
>> Arabic, but was unable to find his post, though I found a reference
to
>> it,
>> with a no longer valid hyper-link.
> 
> This is a link to his message:
>
http://markmail.org/message/qu534sfte3xaaosb#query:sebastian%20weber%20a
rabic+page:1+mid:tbj7vyt56wim4bfj+state:results,
> but the link to his work is no longer valid.
> 
> Kia Teymourian also worked on Arabic support in FOP, and his work is
> available at http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~kiat/fop/.
> 
> Regards, Simon
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
>    I am not sure on what changes sebastian had made in the source
code,
> but i do have the jar files.  If needed i can send them with some
sample
> example. 
> 
> Regards,
> Prakash Sen.
> 
> 
> 

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http://www.nabble.com/Volunteering-to-work-on-FOP-development-tp25442059
p25512296.html
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RE: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by Prakash sen <pr...@gmail.com>.


Simon Pepping @ Home wrote:
> 
>> Arabic support is very important for us.
>> I looked in nabble for Sebastian's post that would allow FOP to work with
>> Arabic, but was unable to find his post, though I found a reference to
>> it,
>> with a no longer valid hyper-link.
> 
> This is a link to his message:
> http://markmail.org/message/qu534sfte3xaaosb#query:sebastian%20weber%20arabic+page:1+mid:tbj7vyt56wim4bfj+state:results,
> but the link to his work is no longer valid.
> 
> Kia Teymourian also worked on Arabic support in FOP, and his work is
> available at http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~kiat/fop/.
> 
> Regards, Simon
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
>    I am not sure on what changes sebastian had made in the source code,
> but i do have the jar files.  If needed i can send them with some sample
> example. 
> 
> Regards,
> Prakash Sen.
> 
> 
> 

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RE: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by sp...@leverkruid.eu.
> Arabic support is very important for us.
> I looked in nabble for Sebastian's post that would allow FOP to work with
> Arabic, but was unable to find his post, though I found a reference to it,
> with a no longer valid hyper-link.

This is a link to his message:
http://markmail.org/message/qu534sfte3xaaosb#query:sebastian%20weber%20arabic+page:1+mid:tbj7vyt56wim4bfj+state:results,
but the link to his work is no longer valid.

Kia Teymourian also worked on Arabic support in FOP, and his work is
available at http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~kiat/fop/.

Regards, Simon




RE: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by Jonathan Levinson <Jo...@intersystems.com>.
Arabic support is very important for us.
I looked in nabble for Sebastian's post that would allow FOP to work with Arabic, but was unable to find his post, though I found a reference to it, with a no longer valid hyper-link.
Do you have a valid link to a patch and/or instructions that will enable FOP to work with Arabic?

Best Regards,
Jonathan S. Levinson
Senior Software Developer
Object Group
InterSystems
617-621-0600


-----Original Message-----
From: Prakash sen [mailto:prakash.sen@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 2:55 PM
To: fop-dev@xmlgraphics.apache.org
Subject: Re: Volunteering to work on FOP development




Pascal Sancho wrote:
> 
> Jonathan Levinson a écrit :
>> We are an international company, and need to support non-Western
>> documents including Greek, Thai and Chinese, amongst many others.  We
>> have technical people at work in every area of the globe.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> Jonathan S. Levinson
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Simon Pepping [mailto:spepping@leverkruid.eu]
>>
>> Another area where FOP needs more work is support for non-Western
>> documents. I do not know where the problems are, but it probably does
>> not work right now. Ideally, we would have contributors from regions
>> with such problems.
>>
>> Regards, Simon
> Hi Jonathan,
> Regarding non-western documents, in current FOP version:
> - Latin and Slave alphabets give kind results, since they only depend on 
> fonts charset (my own experience).
> - Japanese can give expected result (my own experience).
> - ideographics languages (like Chinese) can give unexpected results 
> regarding line-breakink (from what I read in user-list).
> - Arabic (and probably all right-to-left writings) cannot be handled 
> correctly by current FOP version:
>   - right to left not implemented (see [1])
>   - Arabic inner ligatures not handled at all
>  
> [1] 
> http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/compliance.html#fo-property-writingmode-section
> 
> HTH,
> Pascal
> 
> 


Hi,

   There was some change made by sebastian in FOP for arabic characters and
it worked for us, I used it around 2006 - 07 and it is still workin
properly.. 

I beleive the post should be in nabble only.

Regards,
Prakash Sen.
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Re: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by Prakash sen <pr...@gmail.com>.


Pascal Sancho wrote:
> 
> Jonathan Levinson a écrit :
>> We are an international company, and need to support non-Western
>> documents including Greek, Thai and Chinese, amongst many others.  We
>> have technical people at work in every area of the globe.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> Jonathan S. Levinson
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Simon Pepping [mailto:spepping@leverkruid.eu]
>>
>> Another area where FOP needs more work is support for non-Western
>> documents. I do not know where the problems are, but it probably does
>> not work right now. Ideally, we would have contributors from regions
>> with such problems.
>>
>> Regards, Simon
> Hi Jonathan,
> Regarding non-western documents, in current FOP version:
> - Latin and Slave alphabets give kind results, since they only depend on 
> fonts charset (my own experience).
> - Japanese can give expected result (my own experience).
> - ideographics languages (like Chinese) can give unexpected results 
> regarding line-breakink (from what I read in user-list).
> - Arabic (and probably all right-to-left writings) cannot be handled 
> correctly by current FOP version:
>   - right to left not implemented (see [1])
>   - Arabic inner ligatures not handled at all
>  
> [1] 
> http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/compliance.html#fo-property-writingmode-section
> 
> HTH,
> Pascal
> 
> 


Hi,

   There was some change made by sebastian in FOP for arabic characters and
it worked for us, I used it around 2006 - 07 and it is still workin
properly.. 

I beleive the post should be in nabble only.

Regards,
Prakash Sen.
-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Volunteering-to-work-on-FOP-development-tp25442059p25492225.html
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Re: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by Pascal SANCHO <pa...@takoma.fr>.
Jonathan Levinson a écrit :
> We are an international company, and need to support non-Western
> documents including Greek, Thai and Chinese, amongst many others.  We
> have technical people at work in every area of the globe.
>
> Best Regards,
> Jonathan S. Levinson
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Simon Pepping [mailto:spepping@leverkruid.eu]
>
> Another area where FOP needs more work is support for non-Western
> documents. I do not know where the problems are, but it probably does
> not work right now. Ideally, we would have contributors from regions
> with such problems.
>
> Regards, Simon
Hi Jonathan,
Regarding non-western documents, in current FOP version:
- Latin and Slave alphabets give kind results, since they only depend on 
fonts charset (my own experience).
- Japanese can give expected result (my own experience).
- ideographics languages (like Chinese) can give unexpected results 
regarding line-breakink (from what I read in user-list).
- Arabic (and probably all right-to-left writings) cannot be handled 
correctly by current FOP version:
  - right to left not implemented (see [1])
  - Arabic inner ligatures not handled at all
 
[1] 
http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/compliance.html#fo-property-writingmode-section

HTH,
Pascal

RE: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by Jonathan Levinson <Jo...@intersystems.com>.
I'll forward your e-mail to management and tell them there are some
license agreements we need to sign.

We are an international company, and need to support non-Western
documents including Greek, Thai and Chinese, amongst many others.  We
have technical people at work in every area of the globe.

Best Regards,
Jonathan S. Levinson
Senior Software Developer
Object Group
InterSystems
617-621-0600


-----Original Message-----
From: Simon Pepping [mailto:spepping@leverkruid.eu] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 3:49 PM
To: fop-dev@xmlgraphics.apache.org
Subject: Re: Volunteering to work on FOP development

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 03:32:25PM -0400, Jonathan Levinson wrote:
> Hi,
>  
> My management has asked me to volunteer to help fix FOP bugs and add
FOP
> enhancements.  I'm not yet familiar with FOP internals though I've
read
> your design documents.

That is good news indeed. Thanks to Intersystems for this
contribution.

Note that you need to sign an Individual Contributor License Agreement
(ICLA), and most conveniently your company needs to sign a Corporate
Contributor License Agreement (CCLA), see
http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas, before FOP or any other ASF
project can accept your code contributions.

One area in which FOP needs more work is the compliance with the FO
spec, versions 1.0 and 1.1, see
http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/compliance.html.

Another area where FOP needs more work is support for non-Western
documents. I do not know where the problems are, but it probably does
not work right now. Ideally, we would have contributors from regions
with such problems.

Regards, Simon

-- 
Simon Pepping
home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu

Re: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by Alexander Kiel <al...@gmx.net>.
Hi,

> One area in which FOP needs more work is the compliance with the FO
> spec, versions 1.0 and 1.1, see
> http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/compliance.html.

For one example: Recently I needed text-align="outside" and I would 
still be happy to have this. Such rather small feature enhancements 
would give a much better experience using FOP.

Best Regards
Alex

-  
e-mail: alexanderkiel@gmx.net
web:    www.alexanderkiel.net


On Tue, 2009-09-15 at 21:48 +0200, Simon Pepping wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 03:32:25PM -0400, Jonathan Levinson wrote:
> > Hi,
> >  
> > My management has asked me to volunteer to help fix FOP bugs and add FOP
> > enhancements.  I'm not yet familiar with FOP internals though I've read
> > your design documents.
> 
> That is good news indeed. Thanks to Intersystems for this
> contribution.
> 
> Note that you need to sign an Individual Contributor License Agreement
> (ICLA), and most conveniently your company needs to sign a Corporate
> Contributor License Agreement (CCLA), see
> http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas, before FOP or any other ASF
> project can accept your code contributions.
> 
> One area in which FOP needs more work is the compliance with the FO
> spec, versions 1.0 and 1.1, see
> http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/compliance.html.
> 
> Another area where FOP needs more work is support for non-Western
> documents. I do not know where the problems are, but it probably does
> not work right now. Ideally, we would have contributors from regions
> with such problems.
> 
> Regards, Simon
> 

Re: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by Simon Pepping <sp...@leverkruid.eu>.
On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 03:32:25PM -0400, Jonathan Levinson wrote:
> Hi,
>  
> My management has asked me to volunteer to help fix FOP bugs and add FOP
> enhancements.  I'm not yet familiar with FOP internals though I've read
> your design documents.

That is good news indeed. Thanks to Intersystems for this
contribution.

Note that you need to sign an Individual Contributor License Agreement
(ICLA), and most conveniently your company needs to sign a Corporate
Contributor License Agreement (CCLA), see
http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas, before FOP or any other ASF
project can accept your code contributions.

One area in which FOP needs more work is the compliance with the FO
spec, versions 1.0 and 1.1, see
http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/compliance.html.

Another area where FOP needs more work is support for non-Western
documents. I do not know where the problems are, but it probably does
not work right now. Ideally, we would have contributors from regions
with such problems.

Regards, Simon

-- 
Simon Pepping
home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu

RE: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by Jonathan Levinson <Jo...@intersystems.com>.
Yes, I've read the FOP Coding Guidelines [1].
I have an SVN client (Tortoise SVN) and IDE (InteillJ IDEA) set up.

Thanks for the advice on where to get started!

I'm looking at [3]
http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=47709, which is the
failure of the amendment to the font-shorthand-test, and which you say
looks like a Properties bug.

Best Regards,
Jonathan S. Levinson
Senior Software Developer
Object Group
InterSystems
617-621-0600


-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Bowditch [mailto:bowditch_chris@hotmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 4:06 AM
To: fop-dev@xmlgraphics.apache.org
Subject: Re: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Jonathan Levinson wrote:
> Hi,

Hi Jonathon,

>  
> My management has asked me to volunteer to help fix FOP bugs and add
FOP 
> enhancements.  I'm not yet familiar with FOP internals though I've
read 
> your design documents.

Good news indeed. FOP is short on development resources. I take it you 
have read the FOP Coding Guidelines [1] and got SVN client and Java IDE 
setup?

>  
> I work for InterSystems: www.intersystems.com 
> <http://www.intersystems.com> <http://www.intersystems.com> .  I'm 
> responsible for the InterSystems reporting engine: ZEN Reports.  ZEN 
> Reports generates XSLT to transform XML to XSL-FO and uses RenderX
XEP, 
> FOP, and Antenna House for rendering engines.  
>  
> I have to start somewhere and a question I have is this: what would be
a 
> good "starter bug" or enhancement for me to work on?  Can anyone give
me 
> any pointers on how to get started?

The trick for a newbie is to avoid the layout engine. Still there are 
plenty of bugs in the Renderers/Painters, FO Tree or Properties 
component. I had a quick flick through bugzilla and found [2] which may 
be an FOTree related issue and [3] which looks like a Properties bug


[1] http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/dev/conventions.html
[2] http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=47835
[3] http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=47709

Thanks,

Chris


> 
>  
> 
> Thanks!
>   
> Best Regards,
> 
> Jonathan S. Levinson
> 
> Senior Software Developer
> 
> Object Group
> 
> InterSystems
> 
> 617-621-0600
> 
>  
> 


Re: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by Chris Bowditch <bo...@hotmail.com>.
Jonathan Levinson wrote:
> Hi,

Hi Jonathon,

>  
> My management has asked me to volunteer to help fix FOP bugs and add FOP 
> enhancements.  I’m not yet familiar with FOP internals though I’ve read 
> your design documents.

Good news indeed. FOP is short on development resources. I take it you 
have read the FOP Coding Guidelines [1] and got SVN client and Java IDE 
setup?

>  
> I work for InterSystems: www.intersystems.com 
> <http://www.intersystems.com> <http://www.intersystems.com> .  I’m 
> responsible for the InterSystems reporting engine: ZEN Reports.  ZEN 
> Reports generates XSLT to transform XML to XSL-FO and uses RenderX XEP, 
> FOP, and Antenna House for rendering engines.  
>  
> I have to start somewhere and a question I have is this: what would be a 
> good “starter bug” or enhancement for me to work on?  Can anyone give me 
> any pointers on how to get started?

The trick for a newbie is to avoid the layout engine. Still there are 
plenty of bugs in the Renderers/Painters, FO Tree or Properties 
component. I had a quick flick through bugzilla and found [2] which may 
be an FOTree related issue and [3] which looks like a Properties bug


[1] http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/dev/conventions.html
[2] http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=47835
[3] http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=47709

Thanks,

Chris


> 
>  
> 
> Thanks!
>   
> Best Regards,
> 
> Jonathan S. Levinson
> 
> Senior Software Developer
> 
> Object Group
> 
> InterSystems
> 
> 617-621-0600
> 
>  
> 


Re: Volunteering to work on FOP development

Posted by Jeremias Maerki <de...@jeremias-maerki.ch>.
Hi Jonathan,

that's extremely good to hear! Welcome! Say thanks from me to your
management! This is a good decision for your company as you can build
knowledge on an obviously important component in your software portfolio
and you can help steer FOP into directions that help you and your
customers.

As for starting suggestions, that is rather difficult. There are so many
things that you could start. Many are quite hard, especially when it
goes into the area of the layout engine. I guess the usual everygreens
are OTF/CFF font support or TrueType support for PostScript output which
shouldn't be all that hard but are of high value to FOP's users. But
they are not tasks that are done in half a day. If you don't want to
start working off the issue list of your company, you could go through
the Bugzilla tracker and review some open issues. A lot is outdated (and
can be closed) or just slipped through the cracks but it could be a nice
(but slightly inefficient) way to get to know FOP.

We'll gladly help you with pointers once you picked something to work on.

On 14.09.2009 21:32:25 Jonathan Levinson wrote:
> Hi,
>  
> My management has asked me to volunteer to help fix FOP bugs and add FOP
> enhancements.  I'm not yet familiar with FOP internals though I've read
> your design documents.
>  
> I work for InterSystems: www.intersystems.com
> <http://www.intersystems.com> .  I'm responsible for the InterSystems
> reporting engine: ZEN Reports.  ZEN Reports generates XSLT to transform
> XML to XSL-FO and uses RenderX XEP, FOP, and Antenna House for rendering
> engines.  
>  
> I have to start somewhere and a question I have is this: what would be a
> good "starter bug" or enhancement for me to work on?  Can anyone give me
> any pointers on how to get started?
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks!
>   
> Best Regards,
> 
> Jonathan S. Levinson
> 
> Senior Software Developer
> 
> Object Group
> 
> InterSystems
> 
> 617-621-0600
> 
>  
> 




Jeremias Maerki