Frame versus XSL-FO

[Ben Allums]

On 2/27/2013 2:12 PM, Ed Nodland wrote:
> I am curious if the high cost of XSL-FO development is due to FO being
> more difficult then basic XSLT.  We program many XSLTs, some are complex
> that merge data from multiple XML files that contain coded data in
> tables, tables of descriptions of the coded data, header data, etc.
>   XSLT becomes a powerful programming language for text processing if it
> is written recursively like the old LISP language.  I agree this can be
> daunting, but maybe I could eat FO for breakfast.  I'll have to looking
> to it further when due dates don't get in my way.

DISCLAIMER: I work for WebWorks.

I believe there are 3 challenges to XSL-FO in general.  Folks should be 
able to have success with it, but for three things:

  1. XSL-FO is complex.  It has more options and flags than you
     can shake a stick at.  Now, there is a reason for all that
     complexity.  It gives you the ability to format at the level
     you would find in FrameMaker or TeX/LaTeX for printing.

     That's if you have a solid XSL-FO processor.  Commercial
     products are quite good and Apache is moving their FOP
     processor forward in the 1.1 version.

  2. Lack of a UI to configure basic options.  Well, this is what
     our product ePublisher provides for Frame, Word, and DITA
     sourced content.  Much easier to make adjustments there
     rather than digging down into XSL-FO markup and XSL to
     make a routine change.

  3. Lack of maintainable starting points.  The DITA-OT provided
     an initial PDF option in the 1.2-1.4 releases.  It was
     not well designed for extension.  This was improved in the
     DITA-OT 1.5 and later release.  Even so, there are challenges
     to maintaining different publishing profiles.

     ePublisher provides a baseline conversion and a proven method
     to help customer upgrade between releases and maintain minimal
     code changes (if code changes are necessary).  Further, ePublisher
     provides starting points for page templates which can be
     customized to make it easier to get what you want without
     XSL.

Folks are working on these problems.  Progress is being made.  Yet do 
keep in mind that XSL-FO is a very ambitious specification.


Ben Allums
allums at webworks.com
512-381-8885