Re: [xmlroff] xmlroff independent of PDFlib

[Tony G. <Ton...@Su...>]

Dave Malcolm wrote at  2 Jul 2003 15:12:41 +0000:
 > Does the CVS version of xmlroff still depend on PangoPDF?  I'm
 > downloading it now, but am on a slow dialup connection :-(

Yes, xmlroff still depends on PangoPDF.  PangoPDF now has a GNOME
Print backend.

xmlroff uses Pango to lay out the blocks of text.  It actually uses
the PangoPDF version of Pango because PangoPDF has the PDFlib and
GNOME Print backends.  The goal of PangoPDF is to become obsolete, but
because of issues with the build order of pangogp w.r.t. Pango and
GNOME Print, the GNOME Print backend isn't cooked enough to just
submit as an enhancement request patch to Pango.

Note that the PDFlib backend won't be submitted to Pango, since Pango
wouldn't accept it anyway.

I now have an itch to write an SVG backend out of irritation with
GNOME Print, but there's currently no software for viewing multi-page
SVG since the SVG Print WD is too new.  Maybe there will be by the
time I manage to actually scratch that itch.

 > How up-to-date is http://xmlroff.sourceforge.net/building.html ?

It's up-to-date for the released xmlroff 0.2.2.  It would need to
mention GNOME Print and the option of disabling GNOME Print or PDFlib
usage for it to be accurate for the unreleased xmlroff 0.2.3.

Regards,


Tony Graham
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