Re: [tlug] xml to pdf

[Darren Cook <darren@example.com>]

As a follow-up to the below, this finally rose to the top of my to do
list, and I tried XSL. I'm hitting two show-stoppers:

  1. The embedded HTML gets passed through with the tags stripped. If I
define template sections for each HTML tag then the <p> tags all come
first, then then the <h2> tags are grouped afterwards, etc. (I didn't
get as far as tackling the <b> tags inside <p> blocks...)

  2. No contents page!

Advanced XSL might get me past problem 1 (if you know for sure I'd love
to hear), but there seems no solution to problem 2.

So, I think next I might try hacking phpDocumentor (or doxygen) to add
my XML format as a new input type, and then piggyback on the existing
output infrastructure.

Darren


> I've got an xml file, of API documentation, and I need to make it into a
> pdf so it looks like a typical software manual. The XML is not of a
> standard format (as far as I know), and has no DTD, and the lower level
> elements have embedded HTML (that isn't in CDATA blocks).
> 
> I'd welcome advice as to which path I should go down. The main choices
> seem to be:
>   1a. Make a style sheet and view in firefox then print to PDF.
>   1b. Use XSL to convert to HTML (then to PDF using firefox)
>   2a. Some open source program
>   2b. Some commercial program