FOray

Module Users

Developers

	Modules Home
	The FOray Application

	FOray Common
	FOray PS
	FOray Pretty
	FOray Font
	FOray Hyphen
	FOray Graphic
	FOray Speech
	FOray Text
	FOray PDF
	FOray MIF
	FOray FOTree
	FOray AreaTree
	FOray Output
	FOray Render
	The FOray Layout Systems
	FOray Core

FOray: Module Documentation

Introduction
aXSL
Summary of Modules
Building a Module

Introduction

Because of its modular design, FOray can be thought of as a set of open-source modules useful for developers who write document processing applications. Although FOray’s reference application is an XSL-FO application, many of FOray’s components are independent of that standard, and can be successfully used in other document processing schemes.

The purpose of this page is to briefly describe the FOray modules and the dependencies between them.

aXSL

FOray has adopted the aXSL (API for XSL) view of document processing. In a nutshell, this philosophy views document processing not as a monolithic task, but as a set of discrete modules with well-defined interfaces between them. This means that very few FOray modules have dependencies on other FOray modules. Instead, they depend on aXSL interfaces, the implementations of which may or may not be other FOray modules. This modular design not only makes improving one module a simpler, cleaner, and less-risky task, but also allows developers to mix-and-match the "best-of-breed" modules that may be available.

Summary of Modules

The following table lists each FOray module:

Module Name	Repository module	Description	Dependencies
Universal modules (needed by all others)
libraries	lib	Pre-compiled jars for Logging, Apache Xalan, aXSL, etc.	None.
FOrayCommon	foray-common	Low-level utilities that contain features used by, or potentially used by, more than one FOray module. These tend to be things that we wish were part of the Java distribution.	Libraries.
Standalone Modules
FOrayPS	foray-ps	Classes for parsing/interpreting PostScript files as input.	Universals.
FOrayPretty	foray-pretty	Classes for pretty-printing XML output.	Universals.
FOrayFont	foray-font	An axslFont-compliant module for handling fonts.	Universals, FOrayPS (to parse Type1 fonts), FOrayPretty.
FOrayHyphen	foray-hyphen	Hyphenates words in various languages.	Universals.
FOrayGraphic	foray-graphic	An axslGraphic-compliant module for handling graphics, both bitmapped images and vector drawings.	Universals
FOraySpeech	foray-speech	An axslSpeech-compliant module integrating document processing with speech processing.	Universals
FOrayText	foray-text	Handles line-breaking chores.	Universals.
FOrayPDF	foray-pdf	Classes for building a PDF file from scratch.	Universals, FOrayPS.
FOrayMIF	foray-mif	Classes for building a MIF file (Adobe FrameMaker) from scratch.	Universals.
Document Processing Modules
FOrayFOTree	foray-fotree	Classes for parsing an XSL-FO file and making its contents available.	Universals.
FOrayAreaTree	foray-areatree	Classes representing a formatted document.	Universals.
FOrayOutput	foray-output	Classes that convert an FOTree into an output document. This is useful for output formats like MIF and RTF that do their own layout.	Universals, FOrayMIF.
FOrayRender	foray-render	Classes that convert an AreaTree into an output document. This is useful for output formats that require layout to be done for them.	Universals, FOrayOutput, FOrayPS.
Layout Systems
FOrayLayout	foray-layout	Abstractions useful for any layout system.	Universals.
FOrayPioneer	foray-pioneer	The original open-source XSL-FO layout system. It is “eager” and therefore not very sophisticated.	Universals, FOrayLayout.
Applications
FOrayCore	foray-core	XSL-FO processing application, using any set of aXSL components.	Universals.
FOray	foray-app	XSL-FO processing application, using FOray modules.	Universals, FOrayGraphic, FOrayFont, FOrayHyphen, FOrayText, FOrayPDF, FOrayFOTree, FOrayAreaTree, FOrayLayout, FOrayPioneer, FOrayOutput, FOrayRenderer, FOrayCore.

Building a Module

Although each FOray module has its own build script, the preferred way to build FOray modules is to use the main build script, which can intelligently build any subset of FOray that is needed. See Building a Subset of FOray for details.