[Firebird-docs] segmentedlists and lousy PDFs (Help!)

[Paul V. <pa...@vi...>]

Hi Carlos,

> The  new  draft  has  fixed  the latest  issues  you  have  reported
> (thanks!!)
>
> As a test it includes a segmented list, in the Databases/Attachment
> section, that looks pretty well in the HTML output and really bad in
> the PDF :), but it's a good test in any case :)

One "problem" with a tabular segmentedlist is that you can't get rid
of the table headers, but in this case they are very useful. In fact
they are so useful that you could drop the list title.

The trouble with the PDF is that the segmentedlist is rendered in list
format. Which is totally stupid here :-(

By the way, using <constant> directly within a <listitem> is not valid
DocBook. The current version of our build tools doesn't have a problem
with it though. Valid is e.g.

  <listitem>
    <para><constant>isc_info_sql_select</constant></para>
  </listitem>


> What i need to review for change the PDF output, the
> firebirddocs.xsl ??

No, that one is the stylesheet for producing the defaulthtml target.

PDF is produced in wto steps: first, a Formatting Objects file
firebirddocs.fo is produced. The master stylesheet used for this
is manual/src/docs/docbook/fo/docbook.xsl

Then, a FOP (Formatting Objects Processor) turns the .fo into a .pdf

To get the right (table) format in the PDF too, you can add this
instruction (at the same place as the <?dbhtml...> line):

  <?dbfo list-presentation="table"?>

Or we can add this line to build.xml, PDF target:

  <param name="segmentedlist.as.table" expression="1"/>

Unfortunately, in both cases the .fo is built correctly but the PDF
rendering breaks at that point.

This crummy PDF production is really becoming a problem. I'll invest
some time in finding out if it can be fixed. Maybe the newer DocBook
versions do better on this point. Or maybe there are other
alternatives.

If anybody has experience with this: help and advice is much
appreciated!


Greetings,
Paul Vinkenoog