Re: Survey: Where is XSL FO used?

On Thu, Aug 20 2009 18:40:27 +0100, Tony.Graham@MenteithConsulting.com wrote:
> I am giving a talk "XSL FO 2.0: A Technical Overview" at XML-in-Practice
> 2009 [1] in September.
>
> As well as discussing the XSL FO 2.0 Requirements document [2] and the
> work towards XSL FO 2.0 done to date, I want to highlight what can be
> done with XSL 1.1 and what is being achieved today.
>
> So I would like to know how you are using XSL FO.  Please reply
> off-list to Tony.Graham@MenteithConsulting.com.

Thanks to those who responded.  However, there were only five responses
(one multi-part).

There weren't enough responses to be able to discern any trends, so I've
just collated all the responses below.

I am still interested in finding out more about where XSL FO is used,
particularly if there's applications that would make the conference
audience think "I didn't know you could de that!".

If you don't need to be anonymous, I expect that responding on this list
would also be fine.

...
> Use:

1. Manuals and catalogues

2a. Laws

2b. Production of preflights for journals

2c. PDF documentation

3. CSSToXSLFO

4. Generate PDFs for a student records system, exam results

5. PDFs for a customized version of DocBook, invoices

> Volume (e.g., pages per day/week/month/year/job):

1. 20-100 Pages per Job

2a. ca. 3000 pages per day (incl.  preflights), about 40 single books per
    year

2b. ca. 30 pages per day

2c. ca. 10 pages per day

3. a few pages per month

   CSSToXSLFO, being an XML-filter, is built into applications by
   people, often to generate reports from data. I have applied it like
   this myself in a project for the European Commission, where reports
   are generated with customs data and a thousand page voting document
   is produced in 23 languages to support the publication of the
   Combined Nomenclature legislation.

4. Before we issued results only online I used generate the results
   letters using cocoon which could amount to 10,000 pages in a couple
   of days.

5. 130 pages per 3 months

> When you started using XSL FO:

1. 2006

2. 2002

3. 2001

5. 2001?

> Interesting aspects of job/output:

1. Great automation of publishing documents in different languages and
   different Styles (Using XSL-FO).

2a. Our XML source data for a single law includes all of its
    versions. So it's pretty tricky to get the currently valid version
    out of the data, since there might already be some versions that
    will get applicable in the future.

2b. Our authors are writing in-house articles with an specially adapted
    XML editor. We included an option to produce a PDF preflight (via
    XSL-FO and Cocoon) from their articles to rate its length - which is
    important for setting.

2c. We are using DITA in combination with Apache Forrest for our
    internal documentation and offer to generate an PDF output via
    XSL-FO

5. Versatility. I get it to do exactly what I want.

> Additional comments:

2. We are really looking forwart to XSL-FO 2.0

> Anonymous (yes/no):

2. Roman Huditsch, LexisNexis Verlag ARD Orac GmbH & Co KG

3. Werner Donné

5. Éric Bischoff, Bureau Cornavin

Regards,


Tony Graham                         Tony.Graham@MenteithConsulting.com
Director                                  W3C XSL FO SG Invited Expert
Menteith Consulting Ltd                               XML Guild member
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Received on Wednesday, 16 September 2009 10:07:15 UTC