[rfc-i] draft-iab-rfc-use-of-pdf-01, "C.3 PDF Generation Libraries"

[julian.reschke at gmx.de (Julian Reschke)]

On 2016-03-09 18:01, HANSEN, TONY L wrote:
> On 3/2/16, 6:22 AM, "rfc-interest on behalf of Julian Reschke" <rfc-interest-bounces at rfc-editor.org on behalf of julian.reschke at gmx.de> wrote:
>
>
>> Appendix C.3:
>>
>> "One promising direction is suggested in
>> <http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2629xslt/rfc2629xslt.html#output.pdf.fop>:
>> using XSLT to generate XSL-FO which is then processed by a formatting
>> object processor such as Apache FOP."
>>
>> It's not that promising, because:
>>
>> a) Generating XSL-FO from the XML source in addition to HTML duplicates
>> a lot of code, causing lots of additional maintenance. I think it would
>> be more promising to generate PDF from (X)HTML instead.
>>
>> b) XSL-FO itself is powerful, but Apache FOP lacks certain features
>> which makes generating visually pleasing contents hard; notably the
>> absence of table column balancing code. Other XSL-FO processors might be
>> more powerful, but AFAIK none of this is open source.
>>
>> Also, this should mention wkhtml, which is Webkit's HTML engine packaged
>> as command line tool for printing/PDF generation.
>
> Thank you Julian.
>
> Here is some possible rewording of that portion of appendix C.3:
>
> One possible direction is suggested inhttp://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2629xslt/rfc2629xslt.html#output.pdf.fop: using XSLT to generate XSL-FO which is then processed by a formatting object processor such as Apache FOP. Some issues are that
>
> * Apache FOP lacks certain features that would make it difficult to generate visually pleasing contents, such as table column balancing code.
> * Other XML-FO processors that contain such features do not appear to be open source.
>
> Another possible direction would use code common with the HTML generation and then use the Webkit HTML engine (wkhtml) to generate the final PDF.

Sounds good to me!

Best regards, Julian