[xml/sgml-pkgs] db2latex-xsl and alternatives for DocBook XML to PDF

[W. Borgert]

Hi,

unfortunately, the db2latex-xsl project seems to be dead on the
upstream end.  The last release was on 2004-01-30, called
0.8pre1 :-(  Questions and suggestions on the mailing list
remain unanswered.  Of course, we can fix this and that on the
Debian side, but I don't believe we have the human power to do
it properly without living upstream.  Alternatives are:

- dblatex (not yet in Debian, uses Perl :-( and XSL, active
  upstream, XSL parts seem to be based on db2latex-xsl, maybe
  not buildable from sources)

- fop (currently in contrib, depends on J2RE, should be compiled
  with gcj for performance anyway, but I don't know whether this
  would work)

- passivetex (also not very active upstream, AFAIK)

What are your experiences and opinions?  Shall we (Debian) take
over db2latex-xsl?  Shall we package dblatex?  Shall we try to
gcj-compile fop?  Are there more alternatives to db2latex-xsl?

Cheers,
-- 
W. Borgert <debacle at debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~debacle/