[be] [task #8006] free xsl-fo formatter

[Teus Benschop]

Follow-up Comment #3, task #8006 (project bibledit):

Yes, bibledit used fop from the Apache project at the start, but soon ran
into the limits of fop. At that stage XEP was used, which did a much better
job. bibledit also ran into the limits of XEP in particular where footnotes
are used near mt headings - the footnotes will then be placed on the middle of
the page. The XEP people said they are not going to fix it. What you mention
about Java / Pango is a problem too, and the differences I see regularly in
particular when printing pointed Hebrew, but that improved a few years ago. I
have looked into XMLFormatter, but that is very expensive. I have looked into
xmlroff, but that is too limited, and the developer told me to "agitate" to
get features implemented, but over the years nothing has been done to my
feature requests. Then there is the additional problem that not all of a
Bible's layout requirements can be squeezed into the xsl-fo model. In
particular I am now thinking of the requirement that some Bibles have that all
their footnotes and xrefs are grouped together at the bottom of the page in
one flowing paragraph. Xsl-fo in contrast puts each footnote on its own line. 
I have looked into xetex, PassiveTex, but they don't fulfill the requirements.
Then after a long time I decided to come up with the custom solution, and that
will be the usfm2pdf module. Yes, line-breaking and justification will have to
be done manually, but I believe that Pango is going to help partly with that.
Further I've done it before, as Umhloli also has a layout module, and it is a
manageable task.

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