Introduction to FOP
The FOP (Formatting Objects
Processor) package contains a print formatter driven by XSL
formatting objects (XSL-FO). It is a Java application that reads a formatting
object tree and renders the resulting pages to a specified output.
Output formats currently supported include PDF, PCL, PostScript,
SVG, XML (area tree representation), print, AWT, MIF and ASCII
text. The primary output target is PDF.
Package Information
Additional Downloads
Choose the “Linux JDK
Install” file after accepting the license agreement.
FOP Dependencies
Required
JDK-1.5.0_10
Optional
libxslt-1.1.17, JIMI
SDK, Batik and Forrest
(only used to rebuild the documentation)
User Notes: http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/fop
Installation of FOP
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
Ensure $JAVA_HOME is set correctly
before beginning the build.
Some versions of tar will display a message similar to
“tar: A lone
zero block at 33476” when unpacking the source
tarball. You may safely ignore this message.
![[Tip]](../images/tip.png)
Tip
The $FOP_BUILD_DIR/jai-1_1_2_01-lib-linux-i586-jdk.bin
command below installs the JAI components in the JDK tree.
You will be required to view, and then accept (by entering a
y keypress), a
license agreement before the installation will continue. If
you are scripting (automating) the build, you'll need to
account for this. There is information about automating build
commands in the Automated
Building Procedures section of Chapter 2. Towards the end
of this section, specific information for automating this
type of installation is discussed.
Install the JAI components by running the following commands as
the root user while in the root of
the FOP source tree:
cp ../jai-1_1_2_01-lib-linux-i586-jdk.bin . &&
sed -i 's/tail +122/tail -n +122/' \
jai-1_1_2_01-lib-linux-i586-jdk.bin &&
chmod 755 jai-1_1_2_01-lib-linux-i586-jdk.bin &&
FOP_BUILD_DIR=$(pwd) &&
cd $JAVA_HOME &&
$FOP_BUILD_DIR/jai-1_1_2_01-lib-linux-i586-jdk.bin &&
cd $FOP_BUILD_DIR
Installing FOP
required components
Install FOP by running the
following commands:
patch -Np1 -i ../fop-0.20.5-jdk_1.5.0-1.patch &&
./build.sh &&
sed -i "s/build/lib/" fop.sh
Now, as the root user:
install -v -d -m755 \
/opt/fop-0.20.5/{bin,lib,docs/{general,lib,site}} &&
install -v -m755 fop.sh /opt/fop-0.20.5/bin &&
install -v -m644 build/fop.jar lib/avalon-framework-cvs-20020806.jar \
/opt/fop-0.20.5/lib &&
install -v -m644 docs/* /opt/fop-0.20.5/docs &&
install -v -m644 CHANGES LICENSE README ReleaseNotes.html STATUS \
/opt/fop-0.20.5/docs/general &&
install -v -m644 lib/{avalon.LICENSE.txt,readme} \
/opt/fop-0.20.5/docs/lib &&
cp -v -R build/site/* /opt/fop-0.20.5/docs/site &&
ln -svf fop-0.20.5 /opt/fop
You'll need to install one additional Java class library to process SVG objects.
This library is part of the Batik
package, but is also included with the FOP package. If you have Batik installed, ensure the batik.jar library is included in your $CLASSPATH environment variable. Alternatively,
create a symbolic link from /opt/fop-0.20.5/lib/batik.jar pointing to the
full path of the installed batik.jar
file so that the fop.sh script will automatically pick
it up.
If you don't have the Batik
package installed, run the following commands as the root user:
install -v -m644 lib/batik.jar /opt/fop-0.20.5/lib &&
install -v -m644 lib/batik.LICENSE.txt \
/opt/fop-0.20.5/docs/lib
Installing the
Xalan-Java components
The components of FOP required
to process FO files created by an XSL transformation engine (also
known as an XSLT processor) is now complete. An XSL
transformation engine (xsltproc) is included with the libxslt-1.1.17 package in BLFS. The
FOP package includes components
of Xalan-Java to accomplish XSL transformations. If
you have the Xalan-Java package
installed, skip to the next section.
If you wish to install the Xalan-Java components provided by the
FOP package, run the following
commands as the root user:
sed -i "s/build/lib/" xalan.sh &&
install -v -m755 xalan.sh /opt/fop-0.20.5/bin &&
install -v -m644 lib/xml-apis.jar \
lib/xercesImpl-2.2.1.jar \
lib/xalan-2.4.1.jar \
/opt/fop-0.20.5/lib &&
install -v -m644 lib/{xml-apis,xerces,xalan}.LICENSE.txt \
lib/xml-apis.README.txt \
/opt/fop-0.20.5/docs/lib
Installing the Jimi
SDK JAR
If you installed the Java Image I/O class library (Jimi SDK) into the FOP source tree lib directory before building FOP (this will enable Jimi support), ensure
you also install this JAR file into /opt/fop-0.20.5/lib.
Command Explanations
sed -i 's/tail +122/tail -n +122/'
...: The JAI
binary file has a tail command imbedded in the file which
uses obsolete syntax and causes the file to not unpack correctly.
This command fixes the obsolete syntax.
$FOP_BUILD_DIR/../jai-...-jdk.bin: This
command installs the JAI
components into the JDK file
structure. $FOP_BUILD_DIR is used as a
reference point to the source executable and as a method to return
back to the FOP source tree.
sed -i "s/build/lib/"
...: These commands modify the installed shell
scripts so that the location of the installed fop.jar file is correctly identified.
install -v ...; cp -v
...: There is no installation script provided by
the FOP package. These commands
install the package.
ln -svf fop-0.20.5
/opt/fop: This creates a convenience symlink so
that $FOP_HOME doesn't have to be changed
each time there's a package version change.
Configuring FOP
Configuration
Information
Using FOP to process some large
FO's (including the FO derived from the BLFS XML sources), can
lead to memory errors. Unless you add a parameter to the
java command used
in the fop.sh
script you may receive messages similar to the one shown below:
Exception in thread "main"
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
To avoid errors like this, you need to pass an extra parameter to
the java command
used in the fop.sh
script. This can be accomplished by creating a ~/.foprc (which is sourced by the
fop.sh script) and
adding the parameter to the FOP_OPTS
environment variable.
The fop.sh script
looks for a FOP_HOME environment variable
to locate the FOP class
libraries. You can create this variable using the ~/.foprc file as well. Create a ~/.foprc file using the following commands:
cat > ~/.foprc << "EOF"
FOP_OPTS="-Xmx<RAM_Installed>m"
FOP_HOME="/opt/fop"
EOF
Replace <RAM_Installed> with a number
representing the amount of RAM installed in your computer (in
megabytes). An example would be FOP_OPTS="-Xmx768m". For more
information about memory issues running FOP, see http://xml.apache.org/fop/running.html#memory.
To include the fop.sh script in your path, update your
personal or system-wide profile with the following:
PATH=$PATH:/opt/fop/bin