Working through the 'how to get from XML to
PDF' puzzle
- Existing solution - preformatted text in HOLD is split on the page break character and added to an iText Document. See PDFServlet in the Colleague Web project. No XML involved.
- Apache FOP to transform XML into PDF. Reportedly slow, looks complicated. Last release appears to have been July 2003.
- Keep XML in Docbook format
- Use xmlto under Cygwin to transform into FO
- Use Ant 'fop' task to transform .fo into .pdf book
- See: DocBookToPDF
- Use Digester to parse the XML into a Java ProfileView? object, then construct an iText document by calling getXxx to retrieve the text or nested list of other objects.
- Use Digester to parse the XML and create the iText Document directly.
- Contact reports must be in descending date order, either that has to be handled before the XML is generated, or ??