[rfc-i] Should figures float?

[elwynd at folly.org.uk (Elwyn Davies)]

On Sat, 2014-07-12 at 09:40 +0200, Julian Reschke wrote:
> On 2014-07-12 01:04, Nico Williams wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 5:52 PM, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke at gmx.de> wrote:
> >> On 2014-07-12 00:48, Joe Touch wrote:
> >>> That assumes the PDF generation understands the XML flags. That's the
> >>> question I asked before - is this already supported in the context of
> >>> the rest of the unique variant being developed?
> >>> ...
> >>
> >>
> >> I don't know what you mean by "unique variant".
> >>
> >> That being said I *do* have two ways to generate PDF that use the
> >> information from the XML (via XSL-FO and via HTML).
> >
> > I was going to say.  If it's easy to convert to FO...  and you have an
> > XSL for it, so it is easy.
> >
> > If at all possible we should use tools like Apache FOP for this.
> >
> > I'm not that conversant with XSL-FO, but I suspect that it could even
> > be used to generate paginated plain text.  Correct me if I'm wrong
> > please :)
> 
> Likely. But given the problems it has with table column balancing I 
> wouldn't count on pretty results...
> 

It also appears that Apache FOP does not implement the fo:float
directive for floating content.  AFAICS there are no free XSL-FO tools
that implement fo:float (the RenderX XEP engine does but at vast cost).

Some email about implementing fo:float for Apache FOP indicates that
they think they would need several hundred thousand dollars to grease
the wheels in order to able to add this capability.

Regards,
Elwyn