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FOP Status

Current Status of FOP

Status

[last updated December 19, 2005]

Planning and branches of FOP development

This is the development status of Apache FOP. Development on the maintenance branch where FOP 0.20.5 came from has been halted as the focus was transferred entirely to the redesign effort.

Development Status

Development for FOP Trunk (aka Redesign) is addressing the design issues for layout and performance. The new design is focusing on making it possible to be conformant to the spec and be able to handle large documents.

The first preview release (0.90alpha1) had similar functionality to previous FOP releases (although not in every point), some new features (like keeps on all implemented FOs), a rough API and a suitable design for developers to work on more functionality. It turned out that the new code is more stable and useful than we thought. In the meantime many of the problems reported since the initial release have already been resolved.

We now have a good overall design and have been able to add several new features besides recreating most of the features from 0.20.5. We are doing ongoing work to make it easier for newbies to jump in and help. Furthermore, an extensive test suite helps us maintain and improve the quality of the package.

Of course, we also welcome any help on the layout managers. So if you want to push your brain to the limit, come and join us! But don't worry: there are also various other locations where you can find an easier start into the code. And we're glad to help you get jumpstarted. Just ask!

If you're looking for a long-term road-map we have to disappoint you. This is Open Source and we're mostly voluteers working in their free time. What we have is an idea where we want to go. How fast we get there depends on the available time, on how well our ideas work out while developing and on you! There's a document in the Wiki where you can get a glimpse of what points we're currently focusing on.

Status of the individual components

Not all the components of FOP currently have the same quality. The following table tries to give you an overview:

Component Status
API beta, subject to change, though only in details
FO Tree stable
Layout Engine beta
Area Tree stable
PDF (Library and Renderer) stable (SVG: stable)
PostScript stable (SVG: beta)
Java2D, AWT, Bitmap Renderers beta, needs some detail work
Text Renderer beta (feedback wanted)
RTF Handler beta, restricted functionality compared to PDF/PS
PCL Renderer, SVG Renderer non-functional in sandbox, help needed
Font Support stable, but in redesign
Image Support stable, but in need of a redesign
Hyphenation Subsystem stable

Maintenance Status

The latest maintenance release is FOP 0.20.5, released on July 18th, 2003. See release notes for more details. The maintenance branch has been frozen in 2004 so the team can concentrate on the redesign efforts.