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FOP: A Formatting Object to PDF Translator

FOP: A Formatting Object to PDF Translator. James Tauber http://www.jtauber.com/fop/. Outline. Pre-history and History Overview of XSL Overview of PDF Architecture Demo Future Plans. Before FOP. 1994: Self-published Index to the Greek New Testament

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FOP: A Formatting Object to PDF Translator

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  1. FOP: A Formatting Object to PDF Translator James Tauber http://www.jtauber.com/fop/

  2. Outline • Pre-history and History • Overview of XSL • Overview of PDF • Architecture • Demo • Future Plans

  3. Before FOP • 1994: Self-published Index to the Greek New Testament • SGML source: derived from UPenn's lemmatized UBS3 • custom C code + TeX macros + METAFONT • multilingual, multicolumn, dictionary-style headers • whole thing took two weeks (mostly spent designing font) • 1995: Learnt Perl and wrote generalized SGML to HTML and SGML to TeX routines for own use

  4. Before FOP (cont'd) • 1996: Internship at Sun Labs • goal to learn Java • and DSSSL (from draft made available by Jon Bosak) • 1996: Started designing DSSSL formatters • flow object tree to TeX for print • flow object tree to Tk for online • during email exchange with Jon about this, invited to join W3C SGML Activity

  5. The Birth of FOP • 18 August 1998 • first XSL working draft released • I decide to write a formatter that takes XSL FOs and generates PDF • download PDF spec and start writing Perl to output it • 19 August 1998 • James Clark releases first alpha of XT • 21 August 1998 • thread on XML-L leads me to mention formatter • I ask for name suggestions

  6. The Birth of FOP (cont'd) • 24 August 1998 • I announce FOP on XSL-L and xml-dev • name suggested by Chris Maden • version 0.03, written in Perl, not yet released publicly • plan to port to Java after prototyping

  7. A Brief History • Paul Prescod suggests prototyping in Python • I learn Python • Version 0.1.0: first Python version, content still hard-coded • Version 0.1.2: SAX used to read FOs as XML • Version 0.3.1: last Python version • Version 0.4.0: first Java version 30 October 1998 • loses some functionality such as page breaking • Version 0.5.1: last version for 1998 (4 November)

  8. A Brief History (cont'd) • Sun/Adobe announce prize money • FOP is only XSL formatter available • I begin radical re-write in light of December working draft • Start re-re-write in light of April working draft • Release 0.6.0 (5 May 1999)

  9. Block area Inline space Display space Inline area Line area Areas + Spaces

  10. Flow Objects with Properties <block text-align="start" space-before.optimum="12pt" font-size="11pt" line-height="12pt">This is an example of FOP…</block>

  11. Page-masters and regions

  12. PDF • Text format • Sequence of numbered objects • metadata • fonts • groups of pages • pages • streams • Cross-reference of byte offsets in table • Streams containing PDF drawing operations

  13. PDF Example 1 0 obj << /Type /Info /Producer (FOP 0.6.0) >> endobj … 4 0 obj << /Type /Font /Name /F6 /Encoding /AdobeStandardEncoding /BaseFont /Times-Italic /Subtype /Type1 >> endobj … 16 0 obj << /Type /Pages /Count 3 /Kids [ 18 0 R 20 0 R 22 0 R ] /MediaBox [ 0 0 576 792 ] >> endobj … 20 0 obj << /Type /Page /Resources 3 0 R /Contents 19 0 R /Parent 16 0 R >> endobj

  14. PDF Example (cont'd) 17 0 obj << /Length 8458 >> stream BT 100 667 Td /F3 24 Tf 0 -24 Td (Examples) Tj /F1 11 Tf 0 -12 Td … ET endstream endobject

  15. XT FOP Acrobat Reader Layers XML Formatting Objects Formatting Objects(with fully computed properties) Areas + Spaces PDF Pixels on ScreenInk on Page

  16. FOP Packages • com.jtauber.fop • com.jtauber.fop.fo • com.jtauber.fop.fo.properties • com.jtauber.fop.layout • com.jtauber.fop.fontmetrics • com.jtauber.pdf

  17. What's Next • Increase flow object support • lists, rules, etc • Increase property support • colour, borders, backgrounds • Better interfacing • generic SAX parser, DOM support • Better layout • keeps, vertical justification, columns, out-of-line formatting objects, hyphenation, i18n

  18. What you can do • Download an XSLT processor • Download FOP • http://www.jtauber.com/fop/ • Use them to learn XSL • Let me know what you need FOP to be able to do! • jtauber@jtauber.com

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