xmlhack: FOP 0.15.0 on the tracks to XSL Basic Conformance

The XML Apache project has announced FOP 0.15.0, bringing a number of new features for better support of XSL-FO and SVG.

The new release appears to be the result of an increasing team effort:

A very stable group of core committers is being supported by an increasing number of developers and vocal users.

And the target is to bring FOP in line with the XSL specification before the end of February:

FOP is well on track to achieving at least Basic conformance to the XSL specification by the end of the Candidate Recommendation phase.

In addition to a better conformance to XSL itself, FOP 0.15.0 is also tackling SVG and provides a "large test suite for SVG" together with :

better svg support (linear gradients, radial gradients, css style selectors, css colour names, patterns, path curves (except arcs), text tspan and tref, text whitespace handling, text outline and fill, switch, images (including external svg images) references in external svg documents, svg elements (below topxi element), symbol element)

Despite minor issues, the first comments on the xsl-list are positive, as expressed by Jiri Jirat:

My first impressions are superb.