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Marco
28-May-2008, 10:29 PM
Hi Guys,

I just stumbled across the xsl-fo standard and wonder if that would be a
perfect candidate for VDF reporting.

In short:
1. You create data in an XML.
2. You apply an (earlier made) xslt to apply formatting to the data and
produce xsl-fo
3. You use an fo processor to produce the end-result, being either PDF,
PS, RTF etc.

It is made for paged media, with proper page breaks etc etc.

Just wondering if anybody had already some ideas about this?

For more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSL-FO

Cheers,
Marco

Torkild U. Resheim
29-May-2008, 03:00 PM
Hi Marco,

Marco Kuipers wrote:
> Hi Guys,
>
> I just stumbled across the xsl-fo standard and wonder if that would be a
> perfect candidate for VDF reporting.
>
> In short:
> 1. You create data in an XML.
> 2. You apply an (earlier made) xslt to apply formatting to the data and
> produce xsl-fo
> 3. You use an fo processor to produce the end-result, being either PDF,
> PS, RTF etc.
>
> It is made for paged media, with proper page breaks etc etc.
>
> Just wondering if anybody had already some ideas about this?
I did this 6-7 years ago; dumping SQL data to XML then transforming to
XSL:FO and from there to PDF using Apache FOP. It worked like a charm but
was quite memory hungry and those days XSL macro/function and FO support
was limited. The application was used to create a several hundred page (A4)
product catalog with pictures and CODE-39 bars (the product number was
converted to SVG bar codes on the fly).

If I was going to do something similar today I think I would have looked at
OpenOffice as a template designer/viewer as it will happily store it's
documents in XML. I had to do all my XSL by hand. Even today good XSL:FO
designers are few and far between but Altova have a nice selection of XML
tools and even a nice FO XSL:FO designer.
http://www.altova.com/products/stylevision/xslt_xsl_fo_stylesheet_design_for_pdf.html
>
> For more info:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSL-FO
>
> Cheers,
> Marco

Regards,
Torkild