[xml2rfc] PDF

[fred at cisco.com (Fred Baker)]

So I'm sitting in the plenary, and I have heard two important  
statements in the past hour.

One is a comment in passing from someone I met in the hallway,  
someone who has been around the IETF for approximately ever and has  
supported getting a rational document format for pictures, one that  
doesn't require us to be reduced to ASCII Art. He reported to me that  
there was an experiment going on (I presume that this is sanctioned  
by the IESG, but I haven't checked) persuant to the bi-annual  
discussion of "why ASCII?" on the IETF list. Apparently there are  
some documents in the internet draft queue in which the .txt is a  
placeholder and the normative document is a.pdf.

Second, Bob Braden just spent a few moments holding a mike and in  
effect blessed xml2rfc publicly. He said that the RFC Editor uses it  
extensively and works with this community to make sure it has the  
features they need.

Which makes me wonder: what would it take to produce PDF directly?  
Perhaps with pictures? I really don't care to use Word for that. That  
said, the way I create pictures in documents (when they aren't ASCII  
Art) is to make the picture in some other document and paste it into  
a Word file. Twould perhaps be nice if I could store it as a picture  
in some form and import the picture into the HTML version, and then  
"print" the HTML version to PDF, or generate it directly.
>From henrik at levkowetz.com  Wed Mar 22 18:12:07 2006
From: henrik at levkowetz.com (Henrik Levkowetz)
Date: Wed Mar 22 16:12:23 2006
Subject: [xml2rfc] PDF
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Hi,

on 2006-03-22 17:46 Fred Baker said the following:
> So I'm sitting in the plenary, and I have heard two important  
> statements in the past hour.
> 
> One is a comment in passing from someone I met in the hallway,  
> someone who has been around the IETF for approximately ever and has  
> supported getting a rational document format for pictures, one that  
> doesn't require us to be reduced to ASCII Art. He reported to me that  
> there was an experiment going on (I presume that this is sanctioned  
> by the IESG, but I haven't checked) persuant to the bi-annual  
> discussion of "why ASCII?" on the IETF list. Apparently there are  
> some documents in the internet draft queue in which the .txt is a  
> placeholder and the normative document is a.pdf.

Interesting.  New to me.

> Second, Bob Braden just spent a few moments holding a mike and in  
> effect blessed xml2rfc publicly. He said that the RFC Editor uses it  
> extensively and works with this community to make sure it has the  
> features they need.

Yes, that was very nice to hear.

> Which makes me wonder: what would it take to produce PDF directly?  
> Perhaps with pictures? I really don't care to use Word for that. That  
> said, the way I create pictures in documents (when they aren't ASCII  
> Art) is to make the picture in some other document and paste it into  
> a Word file. Twould perhaps be nice if I could store it as a picture  
> in some form and import the picture into the HTML version, and then  
> "print" the HTML version to PDF, or generate it directly.

The tool you want is xml2pdfrfc from Jari Arkko.  It uses xml2rfc and
some other tools to produce pdf: 

	http://www.arkko.com/tools/xml2pdfrfc.html


Regards,

	Henrik
>From fenner at research.att.com  Wed Mar 22 16:22:28 2006
From: fenner at research.att.com (Bill Fenner)
Date: Wed Mar 22 16:23:00 2006
Subject: [xml2rfc] PDF
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>


Fred,

  You mean like http://electricrain.com/fenner/tmp/draft-my-document-00.pdf ?
That was generated with xxe Pro and my plugin.  The graphic is SVG.

  Bill
>From fred at cisco.com  Wed Mar 22 19:05:52 2006
From: fred at cisco.com (Fred Baker)
Date: Wed Mar 22 17:06:04 2006
Subject: [xml2rfc] PDF
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
	<[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>


On Mar 22, 2006, at 6:12 PM, Henrik Levkowetz wrote:

> The tool you want is xml2pdfrfc from Jari Arkko.  It uses xml2rfc and
> some other tools to produce pdf:
>
> 	http://www.arkko.com/tools/xml2pdfrfc.html

Thanks
>From fred at cisco.com  Wed Mar 22 19:07:27 2006
From: fred at cisco.com (Fred Baker)
Date: Wed Mar 22 17:07:38 2006
Subject: [xml2rfc] PDF
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

How did you import the graphic? What did you use to generate the  
graphic?

On Mar 22, 2006, at 6:22 PM, Bill Fenner wrote:

>
> Fred,
>
>   You mean like http://electricrain.com/fenner/tmp/draft-my- 
> document-00.pdf ?
> That was generated with xxe Pro and my plugin.  The graphic is SVG.
>
>   Bill
>From mrose at dbc.mtview.ca.us  Wed Mar 22 17:44:05 2006
From: mrose at dbc.mtview.ca.us (Marshall Rose)
Date: Wed Mar 22 17:44:43 2006
Subject: [xml2rfc] PDF
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
	<[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

> The tool you want is xml2pdfrfc from Jari Arkko.  It uses xml2rfc and
> some other tools to produce pdf:
>
> 	http://www.arkko.com/tools/xml2pdfrfc.html

perhaps it is time for us to put up a "tools" page on xml.resource.org.

may i suggest that interested folks send an email containing

	Title
	Author
	URL
	Two-sentence description

to

	[e-mail]

thanks!

/mtr

	
>From carl at media.org  Wed Mar 22 23:31:25 2006
From: carl at media.org (Carl Malamud)
Date: Wed Mar 22 23:31:37 2006
Subject: [xml2rfc] PDF
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Hi Fred -

> One is a comment in passing from someone I met in the hallway,  
> someone who has been around the IETF for approximately ever and has  
> supported getting a rational document format for pictures, one that  
> doesn't require us to be reduced to ASCII Art. He reported to me that  
> there was an experiment going on (I presume that this is sanctioned  
> by the IESG, but I haven't checked) persuant to the bi-annual  
> discussion of "why ASCII?" on the IETF list. Apparently there are  
> some documents in the internet draft queue in which the .txt is a  
> placeholder and the normative document is a.pdf.

Oy.  Please tell me that you meant the normative document is
xml and the final form rendition is pdf?  :)  (e.g., nroff is to
xml as ascii is to pdf).

If they do go down the pdf route, it's important to understand
there are lots of pieces to pdf.  It's a complicated standard with
lots and lots of bells and whistles.  Did the IESG perhaps confuse
the desire to include pictures, e.g., bitmaps, with pdf?

I'd be a huge fan of, e.g., png or tiff, as a means of expressing
pictures.  (In our world, at the tools level, we could support
SVG as a source code format for generating said pictures, though
I wouldn't be at all opposed to the ability to include arbitrary
bitmaps generated through other means.)

> Which makes me wonder: what would it take to produce PDF directly?  
> Perhaps with pictures? I really don't care to use Word for that. That  
> said, the way I create pictures in documents (when they aren't ASCII  
> Art) is to make the picture in some other document and paste it into  
> a Word file. Twould perhaps be nice if I could store it as a picture  
> in some form and import the picture into the HTML version, and then  
> "print" the HTML version to PDF, or generate it directly.

As pointed out by others, there are a variety of tools that go
straight from xml to pdf.  If you don't want to hassle with that,
the trick I've used for a long time is to include a bitmap in
a <figure> using src=, generate the html, and use the usual tricks
to generate pdf (e.g., in my case, I currently use Safari, which 
lets you take any html doc and export as pdf).

Carl