Formatting Objects

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foXet

Hans Hagen wrote on the mailing list 2004-07-15:

I will add basic support for XML formatting objects to the ConTeXt distribution. Because this is not of interest to everyone, especially not if you want high quality output and/or control etc etc i've set up a dedicated list for this http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/foxet

So, feel free to join. There will not be much trafic in the beginning because i want to start discussion when those who are interested are on the list. And yes, there will be a paper and a screen manual (sample see below). And no, i will not code the documents in XML :-)

The basic idea is the following:

  • x-fo.tex : base module x-fe.tex : a few basic extensions
  • x-fd.tex : definitions (fonts, color)

and later:

  • x-fx.tex : more interesting extensions

and maybe on your own machine:

  • x-fu.tex : user extensions

The x-fx is something we have to discuss on the list since we need format specs for that.

For those not interested, you may consider XML/FO support to be yet another graphic format since one day or the other you may end up with placed XML/FO (TeX and XML/FO can therefore be used mixed).


The attached foxet.pdf contained:

You can process a file containing so called XML formatting objects by issuing the commands:

texexec --pdf --use=foxet yourfile.fo
texexec --pdf --use=foxet yourfile.xml
texexec --pdf --use=foxet yourfile.xyz --xml

The shortcut --foxet can be used instead:

texexec --foxet --pdf yourfile.fox

If your file does not need graphics and/or cross references, you can do with one run and gain some speed by using the --once directive.