[needs-packaging] fop from apache xmlgraphics

[Onkar Shinde]

From the website http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/
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Apache FOP (Formatting Objects Processor) is the world's first print formatter driven by XSL formatting objects (XSL-FO) and the world's first output independent formatter. It is a Java application that reads a formatting object (FO) tree and renders the resulting pages to a specified output. Output formats currently supported include PDF, PCL, PS, SVG, XML (area tree representation), Print, AWT, MIF and TXT. The primary output target is PDF.
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It is one of the alternate solution to generate PDF from docbook using java/ant with help of docbook-xsl

[Alexandre Franke (afranke)]

It's all the more unfortunate that this package is not available as it is suggested by other packages such as docbook-xsl.

[Matteo Settenvini (tchernobog)]

I use this too for some semi-professional formatting work and I had to install it by hand. I recently switched from gentoo which has it packaged allright. I think we really need this.

[Olivier Jacquet (ojacquet)]

For what it's worth; +1.

[Michael Scondo (micha105)]

The packages are already in debian sid.
http://packages.debian.org/sid/fop
(You'll also have to install http://packages.debian.org/sid/libbatik-java)

Could anyone just move these packages into ubuntu, please ?

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

FOP is already in Ubuntu: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fop

[Matteo Settenvini (tchernobog)]

So we just need to have batik built, right?

[Onkar Shinde (onkarshinde)]

Batik has FTBFS for 3 reasons
1. One needs to preseed debconf for Sun java packages to that it can be installed non-interactively on build servers
2. Current batik version build depends on too old java version, 1.4, and it doesn't build with sun-java5-* packages.
3. There is no interest to preseed debconf for java 1.4 packages.

So once a newer version of batik is uploaded it will get build with sun-java5-* packages and then fop will also get built.

[John McCourt (butterman)]

REAL LIFE CASE STUDY

I'm a professional programmer who uses fop & php to create complex mail merges. Sometimes the data has over one million records and or tables in the letters (statements etc). FOP is certainly a very useful tool for me because it produces the actual PDF files. Alternative packages like PRES and Mailshot cost over £2000 a license and only work on Windows. With Ubuntu I can use php to process the data and then call FOP from the php or command line to turn it into printable letters. Having FOP saved the company I work for alot of money and helped me promote Linux in the workplace.

BTW thanks for reporting this as a bug. It is now in Intrepid Main repository.