Alastair Rankine wrote:

> At 08:45 PM 4/20/2003 -0700, Ben Collver wrote:
>
>> I would be interested in finding a good presentation language that 
>> could output to pdf or postscript.  Layout languages such as DocBook 
>> are fine for technical documentation or resume's, but not so great 
>> for stuff like business reports.
>
>
> Docbook is not a layout language. In fact they've done a great job of 
> specifying the markup to be more-or-less completely layout-agnostic.
>
> You probably want to look at XSL-FO which is the polar opposite: a 
> completely layout-centric XML dialect. Unfortunately it's about as 
> user-friendly as postscript :) 


I should have remembered that DocBook is specifically layout agnostic.

Some things I would like:
* device control (such as controlling duplex mode of a laser printer)
* paginated tables (some languages do this poorly!)
* presentation control (for example, with a page resolution of 
5100x6600, plot a point at coordinates [5095,6595])

Can XSL-FO be useful for this?

Ben