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xsltxsl-fo

XSL-FO: is XSL-FO dead technology and only used by niche companies?


I wanted to convert some xml to a magazine like pdf document. A lot like what LaTeX allows you to do however i was not able to find any new books or online tutorials on the subject. Is it worth investing in using this technology or not?

Also, I looked at the Apache XSL-FO project and their last release was in august 2008.

p.s. commercial packages are not an option :(


Solution

  • I guess the only reason for the less availability of XSL-FO processors is due to the fact that it's formatting options are pretty large and quite complex too..

    Since the amount of complexity involved, no one wants to sweat so much and make it open sourced. I heard there were quite good number of cool commercial processors available for XSL-FO. Even Apache FOP is a nice one to generate pdfs out of it.

    Though i haven't used LuaTex, i found XSL-FO is a fun to work. Also it uses just XML to generate pdfs. If you ask me i will tell, it's simple yet powerful. And also i don't want it to die either.. :)