So many words saying so little
Bought this book a couple hours ago. I'm up to page 53 and so far all I've learned is that the author can talk and talk and talk and not say anything useful. This book is extremely painful and I'm not sure there will be any reward at the end. Unfortunately the O'Reilly book on the subject is out of print and this is about all there is ... nothing would almost be better.
Painful experience
I bought this book almost two years ago. Everytime I need to do something in XSL-FO I reach for this book. And almost everytime, I am frustrated and disappointed.
When originally learning XSL-FO, I bought this book because there were not too many options on the market and still aren't many. I felt like it made the learning process way more difficult than was necessary. I read two or three technical books per month and can usually absorb them pretty quick. This book does such a poor job of explaining concepts I struggled for a long time. I am really good with HTML, XML, XPATH and XSLT. I also have a pretty good grasp of print layout concepts and terminology. So I believe my struggle was by no means a technical or conceptual struggle. It was simply a problem of deciphering the author's language and presentation style.
As a reference, this book is even worse! It is just a bulleted list of tags and properties. Most are not defined. Two sentences and simple example of each would have made it useful, but that does not exist.
The one thing that could have saved this book would have been the index. But unfortunately, it's pretty bad also. You can't look up things by concept. You have to know what tag or property you are looking for. That's not of much use. For example, you will not find concepts such as bold, italic, underline or capitalization in the index. So if you don't know what tag or property controls those things you're out of luck. And since the author did such a bad job of teaching you're totally SOL.
I have learned XSL-FO through my own trial and error. I've done a lot of XSL-FO work and feel I have a decent understanding of the subject. Looking back on this book one last time, I can say this is one of the worst technical books I've ever bought.
Not a learning tool
Minimal examples, very little "big picture" orientation, long reference-style lists with minimal explanation of terms if any, and gives short shrift to how XSL:FO works with XSLT. The omission of fo: prefixes in examples is a an auctorial preference I find particularly annoying. Unfortunately it appears to be difficult to locate alternative books.
Definitive - Yes, Effective - No
I'm surprised so many people have given this book a good review. I went with this book after the O'Reilly book was back ordered. What a mistake. The book might cover every formatting object in the W3C XSL-FO recommendation, but it's more like reading just that, the recommendation (which can be found online).
It's a bulleting of objects with minimal examples and sometimes difficult to understand explanations. I'm giving it two stars only because it serves as a useful quick formatting object reference to me at this point.
Avoid this book if you're new to XSL-FO. Otherwise, if you're looking for a reference guide, this might fit what you need.
How did this book get published?
There are some exposition paragraphs at the beginning of each topic. Otherwise the book is just page after page of bulleted lists. It's confusing, hard to read, and not worth your time. Read the O'Reilly book on XSL-FO instead.
(9 reviews)
