Re: [xmlroff] xmlroff's "story"?

[Oliver K. <ok...@ya...>]

Tony Graham wrote:
> 
> And the big picture ideas from more than just me included:

I would have thought that to make xmlroff a success, getting to a stage
where libfo-compat.xsl is no longer needed would be most valuable. Or at
least to the point where everything output by Norman Walsh's docbook-xsl
stylesheet can be handled by xmlroff directly. Part of the problem is
that many people trying xmlroff for the first time may not find
libfo-compat.xsl until after they've been discouraged by the fact that
the first .fo file they attempt to process results in a huge number of
warnings, one critical error and no resulting .pdf.

A manpage for xmlroff would be useful. It could also point people in the
direction of libfo-compat.xsl. If it would help, I could write one. If
so, do you prefer docbook or troff format (docbook is probably sensible
but the Makefile would need to be able to turn it into troff).

>  - Provide a Windows port

Are you thinking of a full port or just a Cygwin build?

>  - Integrate with editors

I wouldn't make this much of a priority. If someone wants this for their
favourite editor, they can easily do it themself.

As to getting rid of PangoXSL, I wouldn't if it serves a real purpose.
Building it is certainly an obstacle to anyone trying to use xmlroff but
that can be more easily solved by producing Debian/Solaris etc packages.
Do you have much dealing with the pango people. Any idea why it hasn't
been merged?

> So how about that as the "story"?
> 
>    xmlroff is a high-quality, multi-platform XSL formatter that excels at
>    DocBook formatting and that integrates easily with other programs and with
>    scripting languages.

That'll do nicely for the package description that goes with the Debian
package so thanks for that. I'd perhaps add the word "fast" in there
too.

Can you improve on the following description for pangoxsl. This is what
I used in the initial Debian package:

   Package: libpangoxsl-1.0-0
   Description: Additional XSL atttributes for Pango
   PangoXSL implements several of the inline properties defined by XSL
   that are not currently implemented by Pango.

Oliver


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