[Firebird-docs] Major improvements in PDF rendering

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

Hello all,

We've finally made a breakthrough in the PDF rendering. A newly-
created driver stylesheet (fo.xsl) overrides a number of things in
the default transformation stylesheets, solving our three major
problems:

- All URL links were broken.
- Bookmarks weren't generated.
- Headers were often too big, and crammed tight between sections
  with no extra space above them.

There's still plenty of room for improvement, but at least the PDF
docs are publishable now. You can find them via this page:

  http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=devel&sub=doc


Things still to be improved/solved:

- Internal links to elements at chapter/article level or above
  don't work.
- Section headers can still wind up at the bottom of a page, with
  the section text starting at the next.
- Widows/orphans.
- URL hyphenating. Not that I'm fond of this, but it may prevent
  ugly justification in short paragraphs containing long URLs.


Changes to the stylesheets etc. have been committed to CVS. (Note: at
this moment, anon CVS still gives an "old" fo.xsl of around 3K - the
right one is around 16K).


Greetings,
Paul Vinkenoog