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

[Eric Richardson]

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.

Hi,
There are two DTDs appropriate for this-don't make your own.
Docbook and TEI although I would go with Docbook
oasis-open.org
They also have a list docbook-apps that is appropriate.

Java approach Xalan/FOP is not as mature but is more future proof.
Openjade DSSSL approach is more mature. Stylesheets for XSLT and DSSSL
are on sourceforge.

Your can contact me off line with questions if you like.

Eric