[xml2rfc] PDF

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

Fred Baker wrote:
> ...
> 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.
> ...

There's a cousin of rfc2629.xslt, rfc2629toFo.xslt, that allows PDF 
generation by means of producing an XSL-FO file, which can then be 
transformed to PDF using FO Formatters, such as Apache FOP.

At this point, this is a bit experimental, as generating some types of 
lists, in particular the references, is non-trivial that way.

Examples can be found at <http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav>, such as 
<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc3986.pdf>. Documentation at 
<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2629xslt/rfc2629xslt.html#output.pdf>.

Best regards, Julian
>From yaakov_s at rad.com  Thu Mar 23 17:15:27 2006
From: yaakov_s at rad.com (Yaakov Stein)
Date: Thu Mar 23 07:16:37 2006
Subject: [xml2rfc] PDF
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

 
> 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).

No, Fred stated correctly. We mean that the PDF will be normative. 
There was a long discussion of this on the ietf@ietf list.

> 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?

Yes, we have researched the many kinds of PDF, 
and have come up with recommendations.

The reasoning for the experiment is both pictures and complex equations.

BTW, the various bitmap and compressed image formats do not have fewer
versions and options than PDF, quite the contrary.

Y(J)S