[xmlroff] Features required for xmlroff 0.4.0?

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

As you know, in a moment of great optimism, I changed the xmlroff description
to:

   xmlroff is a fast, free, high-quality, multi-platform XSL formatter that
   aims to excel at DocBook formatting and that integrates easily with other
   programs and with scripting languages.

We now need to deliver on that statement, and we should do so for xmlroff
0.4.0.

Looking at each part of that statement in turn:

 - fast

   We're still relying on the fact that xmlroff is written in C.

   Recent changes to, for example, avoid using xmlDocPtr in public libfo
   header files may mean that xmlroff is fractionally slower than previously.

 - free

   Yup, still free.

 - high-quality

   Quality hasn't gone down AFAICT, but then 'quality' is a vague term.

   There are at least two recent reports of segfaults that should be fixed so
   xmlroff better exhibits the quality of not falling over when you use it.

 - multi-platform

   This is supposed to mean "also runs on Windows".  I was hoping I could say
   this would be nice to have for xmlroff 0.4.0, but I think it is essential
   that xmlroff 0.4.0 runs on Windows (even if it requires cygwin to do it).

   I need to reinstall Windows on a laptop before I'll be able to start on
   this.

 - XSL formatter

   Unfortunately, I don't see myself being able to implement any new FOs or
   properties for xmlroff 0.4.0 given the number of other changes that I'm
   working on.

 - that aims to excel at DocBook formatting

   Stefan's idea of including libfo-compat.xsl in xmlroff fits in here, since
   you would then not need an additional step when processing DocBook files.

   The man pages in DocBook markup idea would also fit in here.

 - integrates easily with other programs

   I have been working on reducing the references to third-party libraries in
   libfo headers.

   Stefans idea of bundling PangoXSL with xmlroff fits in here since, as Mauro
   also noted recently, it would save downloading and installing another
   package just to use xmlroff.

 - and with scripting languages

   Mauro and I have been discussing API changes (and anyone else can chime
   in).

   There has been no action on creating a SWIG interface.  (I did download
   SWIG, but that hardly counts as action.)


There's a bunch of other stuff that needs to be done just because this is
0.4.0 instead of 0.3.x, including:

 - Update the libfo-examples module to work with libfo-0.4.

   I would also like to update the GTK+ examples to use real tree widgets
   instead of the current shortcut of creating text representations of trees.
   Any takers?


What else needs to be done for xmlroff 0.4.0?

Regards,


Tony.