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

[Trent Shipley]

A meeting is doable.

   What works.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-discuss-admin@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-admin@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us]On Behalf Of John
> (EBo) David
> Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 6:07 PM
> To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> Subject: Re: Advice Please: SAXON, Xalan, JADE, LaTeX, and XSL:FO
>
>
>
> I'm impressed...  I have no idea what half this stuff is ;-)
>
> On the LaTex, etc. I can say this.  Many if not most math and phisics
> departments at major universities have LaTeX styles that conform to
> their universities specific thesis/disertation guidelines...  If you are
> here at ASU, you can download it from the math department.  I downloaded
> a copy over a year ago and have been using it (either directly or in
> modified form) for a variety of papers for my coursework.  You can also
> find similar style templates for MS Word, etc.
>
> If you're up for it I would like to get together and discuss all this.
> I'm starting to write my thesis in plant bio (ecological modeling) and
> soon to start a second in computer science...  Depending on what you
> want to do I may have a couple of different options for you.
>
>   EBo --
>
>
> Trent Shipley wrote:
> >
> > 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.
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