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

[Stefan S. <se...@sy...>]

Tony Graham wrote:

> So another idea becomes:
> 
>  - (Optionally) cope silently with unsupported properties
> 
>    I have been pecking away at the problem (for the last year and a half, it
>    seems) but haven't yet hooked up fo_libfo_context_set_warning_mode() to the
>    right action to ignore unsupported properties.

That sounds like a fine idea. In fact, the 'xmlroff' application as seen
by users could be a frontend that first runs over libfo-compat.xsl to 'internalize'
the tree. As xmlroff progresses, this preprocessing could be phased out.

>>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).
> 
> 
> xmlroff.fo tries for the format of a man page, but it is obviously not useful
> for `man xmlroff`.  You could, however, use it as the basis of a real man
> page.

Heh, why not write it in docbook ? :-)

>>> - Provide a Windows port
>>
>>Are you thinking of a full port or just a Cygwin build?
> 
> 
> The details have yet to be worked out.  We're still at the high-level,
> often-contradictory ideas stage.
> 
> What is possible will depend on what is possible with GLib/GObject and Pango
> on Windows.

Out of curiosity: what is pangoxsl and what is its dependency on pango ?
Is it a layer on top, a replacement, ore something else ?

While I think that porting to cygwin may be reasonable (and not involve
much work), I don't think that a native port is such a good idea at this
time. It would definitely be useful, but it requires substantial work,
and so I think focussing on missing features on a single platform (or
set of platforms) will be more valuable in the short term.

Regards,
		Stefan