Re: docbook crossrefs

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 09:55:08PM +0000, Sander Vesik wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, Daniel Veillard wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 07:12:01PM +0100, Mathieu Lacage wrote:
> > > Finally, since I have started dreaming openly, I'd like to point out
> > > that the coolest thing we could do ever would be to have our own xsl:fo
> > > xslt for xml docbook to render our source xml to pdf or ps with working
> > > cross-refs in the resulting document. But, yeah, this is really a dream.
> > 
> >   Hum, docbook has generic FO stylesheets that can certainly be tweaked
> > (well being subscribed to docbook-apps list, people definitely can configure
> > stuff using parameters to the FO stylesheets).
> > Now if you mean an FO to PDF processor, I humbly suggest to print the
> > XSL (FO) spec to get an idea (have a few cartridge of black ink ready !)
> > People seems to use db2pdf included in Red Hat 8.0, I think Tim Waugh 
> > assembled this nice script with whatever tools are available.
> > 
> 
> Right - but it relies on the document first being converted to PS and then
> a post-conversion of PS to PDF, no? Any such step more or less kills PDF
> specific features like links...

Links within the document (xref's for example) are certainly handled
well by PassiveTeX (which is what Tim's xmlto script uses). You just
need to remember to pass in the '--extensions' parameter to the xmlto
call.

Note that PassiveTex is an extension set of macros on top of pdftex, so
it goes directly from dvi to pdf (not via ps), as far as I recall.

Links between documents in PDF is not something I have even thought
about. My initial reaction is that it doesn't make sense, but that just
may be me.

Malcolm

-- 
Two wrongs are only the beginning.