I have been evaluating all commercial engines for almost 1 year now out of which 6 months I spent working with FOP; the main differences that I see are:
FOP:
Open source, free
Written in JAVA, it should work on anything that has Java on it (at least Windows, Linux, Solaris)
Is still pre-alpha release (last version is 0.95)
As of today, nobody in the open source community has released anything for almost 2 years!
Good if you have basic reports; doesn't support the more advanced stuff (like table-layout="auto", retrieving markers in table headers/footers - part of XSL-FO 1.1 and good for subtotals, etc.)
Some features are buggy (especially around footnotes, breaking tables across pages, etc). These are harder to track and will pop-up later on when you have already written your XSLTs.
Will consume a lot of memory - this is an issue if you want to run multiple reports in the same time (for example if you have a web site).
All commercial products have the following:
Technical support (some vendors will even help you troubleshoot performance issues and debug your stylesheets).
Are Unicode (can handle most scripts like Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Thai, Vienamese, etc.)
If your reports are simple, you can give it a shot. But my personal opinion is: don't go with FOP if you have the money to spend on a commercial engine. I used to think that being open source is cool because I can change it myself - it is not that easy to change, and my opinion is that is also very risky because you don't know what functionality will be affected. The functionality is actually quite complex, and that is why is not being actively improved anymore.
I like the overview of XMLDUDE In the mean time Apache FOP 1.0 has been released. Over the years Apache FOP improved a lot. But the competition didn't stop either. Each of those vendors have their specialties.
What's important for you?
Price FOP is open-source, but for example we get RenderX XEP now for "free" because it is included in our XMetal suite.
Speed If you run your conversion from XML to PDF in a batch, you maybe have plenty of time. If you run your conversion at "real-time" on a website, it must be as quick as possible.
Enhancements Do you want to use only the XSL-FO standards? Some vendors very much extension elements which will not work in the competitor XSL-FO software.
AntennaHouse, in the past had a kind of FO preview which was very useful for debugging.
Worth remembering that if your requirement is just to produce PDF from XML, you can do this with XSLT and LaTeX without any need to involve FO. The downside is you need to know some LaTeX; the upside is LaTeX already knows about documents (XeLaTeX is natively UTF-8), runs on anything, with plugins for formatting (packages), and strong support both commercial and volunteer.
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我已经评估所有商业引擎近一年了，其中 6 个月我与 FOP 一起工作；我看到的主要区别是：
FOP：
所有商业产品都具有以下功能：
Antenna House
Ecrion
RenderX
如果您的报告很简单，您可以尝试一下。
但我个人的观点是：如果你有钱买商业引擎，就不要选择 FOP。我曾经认为开源很酷，因为我可以自己改变它——改变并不那么容易，而且我的观点是这也非常危险，因为你不知道哪些功能会受到影响。该功能实际上相当复杂，这就是为什么不再积极改进的原因。
I have been evaluating all commercial engines for almost 1 year now out of which 6 months I spent working with FOP; the main differences that I see are:
FOP:
All commercial products have the following:
Antenna House
Ecrion
RenderX
If your reports are simple, you can give it a shot.
But my personal opinion is: don't go with FOP if you have the money to spend on a commercial engine. I used to think that being open source is cool because I can change it myself - it is not that easy to change, and my opinion is that is also very risky because you don't know what functionality will be affected. The functionality is actually quite complex, and that is why is not being actively improved anymore.
我喜欢 XMLDUDE 的概述
与此同时，Apache FOP 1.0 已经发布。多年来，Apache FOP 得到了很大改进。
但竞争也没有停止。每个供应商都有自己的专长。
什么对你来说重要？
价格 FOP 是开源的，但例如我们现在“免费”获得 RenderX XEP，因为它包含在我们的 XMetal 套件中。
速度
如果您批量运行从 XML 到 PDF 的转换，您可能有足够的时间。
如果您在网站上“实时”运行转换，则转换必须尽可能快。
增强
您只想使用 XSL-FO 标准吗？一些供应商有很多扩展元素，这些元素在竞争对手的 XSL-FO 软件中不起作用。
AntennaHouse过去有一种FO预览，这对于调试非常有用。
I like the overview of XMLDUDE
In the mean time Apache FOP 1.0 has been released. Over the years Apache FOP improved a lot.
But the competition didn't stop either. Each of those vendors have their specialties.
What's important for you?
Price FOP is open-source, but for example we get RenderX XEP now for "free" because it is included in our XMetal suite.
Speed
If you run your conversion from XML to PDF in a batch, you maybe have plenty of time.
If you run your conversion at "real-time" on a website, it must be as quick as possible.
Enhancements
Do you want to use only the XSL-FO standards? Some vendors very much extension elements which will not work in the competitor XSL-FO software.
AntennaHouse, in the past had a kind of FO preview which was very useful for debugging.
值得记住的是，如果您的要求只是从 XML 生成 PDF，您可以使用 XSLT 和 LaTeX 来完成此操作，而无需涉及 FO。缺点是你需要了解一些 LaTeX；好处是 LaTeX 已经了解文档（XeLaTeX 本身就是 UTF-8），可以在任何东西上运行，带有格式化插件（包），并且对商业和志愿者都有强大的支持。
Worth remembering that if your requirement is just to produce PDF from XML, you can do this with XSLT and LaTeX without any need to involve FO. The downside is you need to know some LaTeX; the upside is LaTeX already knows about documents (XeLaTeX is natively UTF-8), runs on anything, with plugins for formatting (packages), and strong support both commercial and volunteer.