xmlto problems

[Boey Maun Suang]

Hi Brad,

> BUT, I just discovered that it is using /usr/bin/getopt and not / 
> opt/local/bin/getopt so I have a problem with PATH.  Fixing that  
> solves it.

Glad to hear that that's fixed :-)

> I should have said partially solves it.  Your a2x solution builds a  
> pdf file nicely.  But using xmlto I get latex errors, which I  
> assume may be because I'm using texlive rather than the macports  
> tetex distro?
>
> This seems pretty old to me:
> xmltex version: 2002/06/25 v1.9 (Exp):
> (/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/xmltex/base/xmltex.cfg)
>
> ...
>
> ! Argument of \XML at getattrib has an extra }.
> <inserted text>
>                 \par
> l.2 ...efore region-name="xsl-region-before-blank"
>                                                    extent="0.4in"  
> display-al...
>
> ?
> ! Emergency stop.
> <inserted text>
>                 \par
> l.2 ...efore region-name="xsl-region-before-blank"
>                                                    extent="0.4in"  
> display-al...
>
> !  ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!

I'm afraid that I think that this is a problem with xmltex and/or  
PassiveTeX, which xmlto uses to generate PDFs from XSL-FO.  I get the  
same error, and CTAN shows the version of xmltex displayed above to  
be the most recent release.  Furthermore, _DocBook XSL: The  
Definitive Guide_ (2005) says that "[PassiveTeX] has fallen behind in  
its implementation of the XSL-FO specification, and many features of  
DocBook XSL don't work in PassiveTeX" [1]; the package that I just  
downloaded from http://www.tei-c.org.uk/Software/passivetex/ was last  
updated in 2003.  Sebastian Rahtz was also the maintainer of teTeX,  
which he stopped maintaining last year, so I don't think that he will  
be working on either again in the near future.

So, unless you fancy hacking on xmlto to get it to support other FO  
processors, or on xmltex/PassiveTeX to update its handling of XSL-FO,  
I don't think you'll have much luck using xmlto on documents that  
generate more complex XSL-FO.

Kind regards,


Maun Suang

[1] http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/FOprocessors.html

-- 
Boey Maun Suang (Boey is my surname)
Email: boeyms at macports dot org