- From: Kai Weber <sermo_de_arboribus@seznam.cz>
- Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2013 20:01:06 +0100 (CET)
- To: <public-ppl@w3.org>
- Message-Id: <KHY.8NqP.7JKQBLPLWMY.1Iln}o@seznam.cz>
charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <html><body><br>Re: Arved's statement on APIs and libraries and Tony's summary of mentioned layout technologies, it came to my mind, that I've used PDFlib for generating PDFs from a PHP environment. This library also is available with language bindings for Cobol, COM, C, C++, Objective C, Java, .NET, Perl, <span class="highlight selected"></span>Python, REALbasic, RPG, and Ruby, so I guess it could be rather wide-spread in the developer community, though I don't have any actual data on that. <br>Anyway, I think PDFlib[1] could be another entry in the technology listing...<br><br>Best regards,<br>Kai Weber<br><br>[1]http://www.pdflib.com/products/pdflib-family/pdflib/<br><br><p>---------- Původní zpráva ----------<br>Od: Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom2@eastlink.ca><br>Datum: 28. 12. 2013<br>Předmět: Re: Revise group description?</p><br><blockquote>On 12/28/2013 11:06 AM, Tony Graham wrote:<br>> On Tue, December 17, 2013 6:19 pm, Jean Kaplansky wrote:<br>>> I know that most of the activity in this group has been around XSL-FO, but<br>>> I think we might get more interest if we just say:<br>>><br>>> “For people interested in page layout technologies…” rather than<br>>> explicitly saying XSL-FO.<br>>><br>>> I have a hunch that this may be chasing any but the most hardcore XSL-FO<br>>> enthusiasts away. We already know that there are a lot of people<br>>> experimenting with CSS for print, for example. Also while most people<br>>> think of eBooks as being reflowable, there’s a huge demand for fixed<br>>> layout pages in eBooks in trade and educational titles. We should try to<br>>> get some of these people interested in the group.<br>>><br>>> Just my $.02.<br>>><br>>> -Jean K.<br>>><br>>> From: Dave Pawson <dave.pawson@gmail.com<mailto:dave.pawson@gmail.com>><br>> ...<br>>> An alternative:<br>>> the Print & Page Layout Community Group is here to discuss XSL-FO,<br>>> requirements or other aspects of XML in print.<br>>><br>>> The success of the XSL-FO as a technology shows there's a<br>>> strong interest in development and implementation. The<br>>> Print and Page Layout Community Group is intended as a place to<br>>> build a community of XSL-FO users and raise the<br>>> visibility of this technology<br>> I don't think that it is viable for this CG to be only about XSL-FO. I,<br>> personally, would much rather that this CG was neutral ground rather than<br>> just the last bastion of XSL-FO. It is, of course, the last bastion of<br>> XSL-FO just because there is no other, but if that shouldn't be our sole<br>> purpose.<br>> [ SNIP ]<br>Fine post, very useful to me in summarizing issues. I am not intimately <br>involved in the print and publishing field: for me it's an incidental <br>albeit fairly frequent requirement to produce nicely-formatted stuff on <br>paper. By incidental I mean simply that the printing requirement is <br>secondary to systems that I am engaged to develop; but that does not <br>diminish its importance. After all, people do love their reports. :-)<br><br>Name of the game out in the field, apart from publishing-oriented <br>systems that I know very little about, developers muckle onto a library <br>that works (like iText) or use a built-in for a BI system. A handful of <br>folks use TeX/LateX or XSL-FO. If a client happens to have Quark or <br>InDesign for some reason you try to use that, not because you want to, <br>but the client paid big $$$ for the software.<br><br>What I am saying is that like 0.1 percent of all developers on the <br>planet have ever heard of most of the technologies and products we are <br>talking about here. But a whole whack of developers will be asked at <br>some point to produce pretty reports: they will not be using a <br>purpose-built high-end publishing app to do it. A successful and <br>pervasive approach to print and publishing focuses - IMHO - on libraries <br>and APIs for the most popular programming languages. Our major end user <br>community here is not professional publishing experts.<br><br>XSL-FO still has a chance for the needs of the larger community, I <br>think. But it's not being well advertised.<br><br>Arved</blockquote></body></html>--=_5fbe89125c1988f129507da614f05d-7b5d-503a-9d22-babcb4583d20_=--
Received on Saturday, 28 December 2013 19:01:41 UTC