Suggestion: Using SAX->XML->FOP for formatted printing

[Jeff K. <jt...@ad...>]

I came across this article today that would offer one possible path for
SQL ledger to offer the formatted printing features that are currently
being discussed.

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/09/19/sax-non-xml-data.html

I found it interesting because the subject discussed would be something
that could be grafted on top of SQL ledger, rather than requiring large
changes in the perl scripts themselves.

Specifically, the article introduces some techniques that can be used to
output perl structures as XML. From there, we could leverage the FOP
library to produce formatted PDF output. The current implementation of
the FOP libarary is Java-based, but that may not be a permanent
limitation.

There are a number of other benefits to having XML output of
sql-ledger's perl variables, as one can imagine.