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E. Sample tool information
[< D.3.3][^^^]
E.0 Sample questions for vendors
[< E.][^^][^^^]
Answers to the following questions may prove useful when trying to better understand an XSL-FO product offering from a vendor. The specific questions are grouped under topical questions. This by no means makes up a complete list of questions as you may have your own criteria to add, nonetheless, they do cover aspects of XSLT that may impact on the stylesheets and transformation specifications you write.
[[1] - how is the product identified?
[[2] - what is the name of the XSL-FO processor in product literature?
 [2] - which version of XSL-FO is supported?
 [2] - to which email address or URL are questions forwarded for more information in general?
 [2] - to which email address or URL are questions forwarded for more information specific to the answers to these technical questions?
][1] - what are the details of the implementation and invocation of the XSL-FO processor?
[[2] - which hardware/operating system platforms support the processor?
 [2] - which character sets are supported for the input file encoding?
 [2] - what is the XSLT processor used?
[[3] - can it be replaced with another XSLT processor?
][2] - what is the XML processor used?
[[3] - can it be replaced with another XML processor?
 [3] - does the XML processor support minimally declared internal declaration subsets with only attribute list declarations of ID-typed attributes?
 [3] - does the XML processor support XML Inclusions (Xinclude)?
 [3] - does the XML processor support catalogues for public identifiers?
 [3] - does the XML processor validate the source file?
[[4] - can this be turned on and off?
]][2] - can the processor be embedded in other applications?
[[3] - can the processor be configured as a servlet in a web server?
][2] - is the source code of the processor available?
[[3] - in what language is the processor written?
][2] - for Windows-based environments:
[[3] - can the processor be invoked from the MSDOS command-line box?
 [3] - can the processor be invoked from a GUI interface?
 [3] - what other methods of invocation can be triggered (DLL, RPC, etc.)?
 [3] - can error messages be explicitly redirected to a file using an invocation parameter (since, for example, Windows-95 does not allow for redirection of the standard error port to a file)?
]]]
[[1] - which features of XSL-FO are supported?
[[2] - does the processor respect the inherent writing directions of Unicode characters and the Unicode bidirectional text algorithm?
 [2] - which constructs are absent or only partially supported?
 [2] - what graphics formats does the product support?
[[3] - does the formatter support relative URI values for external graphic resources?
 [3] - does the formatter require a protocol specification in the URI?
 [3] - are vector-based formats rendered at device resolution?
 [3] - example of photographic formats
[[4] - JPEG (supports "lossy" compression)
][3] - examples of pixel formats
[[4] - BMP (Windows)
 [4] - PNG (see [http://www.libpng.org/] and [http://burnallgifs.org] for information)
 [4] - GIF
][3] - examples of vector formats
[[4] - SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
 [4] - WMF (Windows Meta File)
 [4] - EPS (Encapsulated PostScript)
 [4] - CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile)
]][2] - which color schemes are supported?
][1] - which features of EXSLFO are supported?
[[2] - see [http://www.exslfo.org] for details on community-defined extensions to the XSL-FO vocabulary that may or may not be supported by vendors
][1] - how are particular features implemented?
[[2] - at what conformance level is each feature implemented?
 [2] - what is the thickness of each of the border width named values?
 [2] - which writing directions are supported?
 [2] - which languages are supported for hyphenation?
 [2] - which fonts are supported and how are fonts supported?
 [2] - which ligatures are recognized for adjacent characters?
 [2] - which properties and states of <[basic-link]> are supported and how?
[[3] - does the user interface have a "back" function to retrace steps?
]]]
[[1] - what convenience features are implemented?
[[2] - can the resulting file be fragmented for ease of management or transmission?
 [2] - can the result be packaged in groups of different page sizes (to support fold-outs)?
 [2] - can different hoppers be specified for the printer for different paper selections?
][1] - what extension formatting objects and properties are implemented?
[[2] - are there any vendor-defined extensions to the vocabulary?
 [2] - what namespace URI is used to identify the vocabulary?
][1] - what output formats are supported?
[[2] - PDF?
[[3] - are internal links supported?
 [3] - are external links supported?
 [3] - is there an extension for turning on the PDF security bit in the result?
 [3] - is there an extension for defining the "General Info" fields for title, subject, author, etc.
][2] - PostScript?
 [2] - Windows GDI?
 [2] - PCL?
 [2] - TeX?
 [2] - RTF?
 [2] - TIFF?
 [2] - AFP?
 [2] - other?
][1] - what instream foreign object vocabulary namespaces are supported?
[[2] - SVG?
 [2] - MathML?
 [2] - other?
]]

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+//ISBN 978-1-894049::CSL::Courses::PFUX//DOCUMENT Practical Formatting Using XSL-FO 2008-01-27 17:30UTC//EN
Practical Formatting Using XSL-FO
Seventh Edition - 2008-01-27
ISBN 978-1-894049-19-1
Copyright © Crane Softwrights Ltd.