Re: xsl fo - problem opening pdf file

Mark,

Let me reflect back to you what I *think* your situation is, so if I miss 
the mark you'll understand that (and we can avoid further confusion). If 
I'm correct, maybe my comments will be helpful....
At 06:48 PM 5/13/2003, you wrote:
>    I am using saxon and IE6.0
From this I infer you are (a) using Saxon for development and 
stylesheet-testing purposes, and (b) IE6.0 to process the same source with 
the same stylesheet in the browser.
>     I have a link on my page. When the user clicks on
> the link, it is supposed to open a pdf file in a new
> window.
Meaning, I take it, that "a pdf file must be generated, and opened in a new 
window".
What you don't say is whether you expect this pdf file to be created on a 
web server and delivered, as PDF, to the user (to be opened in a new 
window), or whether you expect an XML document to be delivered to the 
user's browser, which will perform the transformation and open the 
resulting PDF in a new window.
I'm guessing, from the behavior you describe, that you expect the latter -- 
the web server will deliver XML (what kind of file is named by the link?) 
and IE will do the transform to create PDF.
If that's the case, you're out of luck. This just isn't the way IE works. 
It doesn't perform arbitrary transformations into any format you want, then 
open the appropriate application to handle the result of the transform. The 
only way to get IE to display anything at all is to use format it knows how 
to read (it can handle raw XML with CSS, and it can handle and XML->HTML 
transform and display the resulting HTML); nor does it do any "creating of 
files" at all when it does this (at least not that the developer has access 
to). So if given an XML file to transform into something other than HTML, 
it's going to gag -- which is what it's doing.
Generally speaking, developers who are delivering PDF over the net from 
XML, are performing their transformations on the server. This process can 
be engineered to be a black box to the web browser: it asks for PDF and 
gets back PDF, and never knows that file was generated only when requested. 
To do this, however, you need not client-side technology (such as IE), but 
technology on the server (Saxon or Xalan in a Java framework; a .NET 
framework...), including an XSL-FO implementation (that is, a piece of 
software that knows how to make PDF files out of the XSL formatting objects 
that result from your transformation).
This could change if/when browser technology were integrated with an XSL-FO 
engine. Imagine, if you will, that Adobe Acrobat had XSL support, including 
not only a transformation engine that knew what to do with XSL stylesheets 
(analogous to Saxon or MSXML) but also an XSL-FO formatter (which neither 
Saxon nor MSXML have), which would take the results of an FO transform, map 
the formatting objects to Acrobat's internals (possibly but not necessarily 
serializing a PDF "file" along the way) and display the result. In such a 
case, your user could point Acrobat at an XML file, and assuming it called 
in an XSL-FO stylesheet, she or he would see "PDF". Currently, AFAIK there 
are no such browsers available (though one or two of the XSL-FO engines 
could be coming close).
For now -- again, assuming I'm rightly diagnosing your problem -- you may 
have to look into how to perform the PDF conversion on the server.
I hope that helps,
Wendell

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