Advice Please: SAXON, Xalan, JADE, LaTeX, and XSL:FO

[Trent Shipley]

Flow chart for Dissertation preparation.
(Dissertation is in Cultural Anthropology)
---------------------------------------------------

10 SGML + emacs + normalize
   |
   V
20 XML + DTD + nsgmls verification
   |
   V
30 (XSLT + (SAXON|Xalan))|(DSSSL + JADE)
   |
   V
40 (XSL:FO + WordPerfect|Word|?)|(LaTeX + latex)
   |                              |
   V                              |
50 (LaTeX|TeX)?                   |
   |                              |
   V                              V
60 (dvi)? <------------------------
   |
   V
70 PostScript
   |
   V
80 Fomatted hard copy

----------------------------------------------------

As you know I am working on my Dissertation.  I am currently in step '20'
and ready to start working on a DTD.  This should be pretty straight
forward. I am anticipating few problems.

Likewise steps 60 to 80 should pose few problems.  However commercial
documents are scarce for steps 30 and 40 so I am soliciting advice.

30: SAXON vs Xalan vs JADE

31: Has anyone worked with these freeware products?  How do they compare?

32: I have done some research on XSLT and am pretty sure I can get the hang
of it.  The _structure_ of DSSSL looks pretty similar to XSLT (historically
the other way around, of course).  How much harder is it to use DSSSL than
XSLT?

33: How much will working with DSSSL help learn LISP/Scheme style
programming?

34: What will look better on a resume, DSSSL or XSLT?


40: XSL:FO vs LaTeX (Yes, I know they aren't interchangeable.)

41:   There are no math formulas in the dissertation also no color and no
graphics.  There is lots of manipulation of block formatting, fonts, line
spacing changes and footnoting.

41: FO looks like it is more intuitive and more expressive.    Is this true?

42: Is LaTeX likely to require a lot of tinkering to get *exactly* the
result I want?  Will I wind up coding my own modules and working in TeX?

43: The text is on young people in Jordan.  I will be using the standard
Latin-1 characters plus the Arabic Unicode code page plus a couple of other
Latin code pages plus a Greek and a Cyrillic code page to transliterate the
Arabic.  It looks like FO has much better support for internationalization
than LaTeX.  It looks like LaTeX is limited largely to European languages.

44: I suspect that WordPerfect and Word can read FO documents, but I'm not
100% sure.  I can't find an FO to TeX or dvi or PostScript converter on
SourceForge.  bummer.




----------------------------------------------------

Trent Shipley

Work:
(602) 522-7502
mailto:tshipley@symbio-tech.com
http://www.symbio-tech.com