Frame versus XSL-FO

[Ed Nodland]

Well, it sounds like the jury is in, and it does not look good for FO


On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 11:37 AM, Scott Prentice <sp10 at leximation.com> wrote:

>  Hi Ed...
>
> Yes .. the cost is definitely related to the complexity. If you have FO
> developers in-house, that will help a lot. The key is that you need a solid
> understanding of XSLT, plus you need to fully understand page layout
> concepts, and on top of that the FO language itself is huge and complex. If
> you want to learn FO, I highly recommend finding a way to take Ken Holman's
> class "Practical Formatting Using XSL-FO" (see
> http://www.cranesoftwrights.com/). This will give you a good solid base
> from which to start.
>
> A lot of XSLT developers think that they can also do FO development.
> That's where you run into trouble. There's a lot more involved.
>
> However .. regardless of your ability to create and maintain FO
> stylesheets, you can never achieve the same level of formatting with FO
> that you get from FM. You can get close, and if close is good enough (along
> with other benefits of FO), then FO can be a good solution.
>
> Cheers,
>
> ...scott
>
>
>  On 2/27/13 12:12 PM, Ed Nodland wrote:
>
> These are good inputs.
>
>  The "site:" for searching was new to me.  Thanks
>
>  I think I will stay with Framemaker and upgrade to version 11.  I hope
> Adobe improves the stability and UI issues as time goes on.
>
>  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.
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Combs, Richard <
> richard.combs at polycom.com> wrote:
>
>>  Harro de Jong wrote:
>>
>> > > Also, I could not find the search capability on frameusers.com to
>> search
>> > older topics
>> > > by keyword other then the archive that looks like something out of
>> the 90's.
>> >  Am I
>> > > missing some capability somewhere?
>> >
>> >
>> > I use the search at
>> > < http://www.mail-archive.com/framers@lists.frameusers.com/info.html>
>>
>>  I use Google: <search term> site:frameusers.com
>>
>> Richard G. Combs
>> Senior Technical Writer
>> Polycom, Inc.
>> richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
>> 303-223-5111
>> ------
>> rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
>> 303-903-6372
>> ------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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