Any thoughts or comments on this ? Of course, I don't expect anybody to make a 
commitment that it will change in backwards compatible ways.

Alexios


On Feb 8, 2012, at 5:30 PM, Alexios Giotis wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I am already storing some millions per month of files containing FOP 
> intermediate format (FOP_IF) using a private patched branch based on FOP 1.0. 
> The current use case is performance. If a document is found in the store 
> containing FOP_IF, then use it and create the final output format (typically 
> PDF). If not, then start from XML. The retention period of the FOP_IF files 
> is 6 months to 1 year. The XML files are kept for at least 10 years. In my 
> tests, 85% of the time is spent on the layout and the rest for rendering. 
> This has worked well, especially for big documents (with thousands of pages). 
> I have no worries about the FOP_IF format and how it will evolve as I know 
> that they will be gone after 6 months or one year max. And for sure, I can 
> keep an older version for that long. 
> 
> I am now planing to use FOP in different ways and use cases such as:
> 
> 1. Bypassing FOP's layout engine and it's quirks in XSL:FO input, cpu-time 
> and memory. This means directly creating FOP_IF. With the same effort, I 
> could use PDFBox (or iText 2.x) to create PDF files. But having FOP_IF, I 
> also produce AFP, PS and PCL which I need and I know no other open sources 
> renderers.
> 
> 2. Longer storage of FOP_IF. Compared to storing XML, it's faster, less 
> components are involved until the final output and it allows for easier 
> versioning. For example, given the same XSL:FO input, FOP 2.0 will not 
> produce the *identical* content as FOP 1.0 (I hope somebody will disagree to 
> this :) Compared to storing PDF, the required space is much less as I have 
> big volumes on expensive EMC storage. Secondly I retain the flexibility on 
> selecting parts to render. Not all users have the permissions to see all 
> parts of the documents. Also, some users see masked values (e.g. stars in 
> place of a card number).
> 
> 
> For both cases, I really need to know your thoughts and plans for FOP_IF. 
> Watching the lists the last 2 years, I have not noticed anything related to 
> it.
> 
> 
> Greetings,
> Alexios Giotis
> 


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