[publican-list] Possible alternative to FOP!

[Jeff Fearn]

Hi everybody, as you all no doubt know we have been searching for an 
alternative to FOP for some time. FOP has proven very expensive to 
support and package, and has basically been a thorn in our side for ages :(

Enter http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ a new approach to HTML->PDF 
conversion. Now I've been rather negative about this approach since 
quite  frankly the output of existing tools is poor, but this tool takes 
the output to a new level!

I urge you to take a look at the test PDF [1] I generated for the 
Publican Users' Guide before you write off this approach.

After a few tweaks to the HTML-Single style-sheet the out put is on-par 
with FOP. Clearly there are limitations to what this can do, but the 
benefits of this over FOP are significant, and I think overall we'd get 
a lot more return for our effort in fixing layout issues with this tool 
than continuing smashing our faces against the impenetrable mountain of 
pain of FOP.

Initail thoughts wkhtmltopdf Vs FOP:

Cons:

Foot notes become end notes


Pros:

Not Java
Layout matches HTML
Not Java
Layout synced with HTML
Not Java
Non Intel arches possible
Not Java
Fast
Not Java
Small memory footprint
Not Java
Maintainable
Not Java

Discuss!

Cheers, Jeff.

1: http://fedorapeople.org/~jfearn/PUG_test.pdf