Formatting issues when processing DocBook FO output to RTF

[opeongo]

I tried executing a transformation scenario through the Apache FOP processor to RTF output. The output had a lot of issues, including

• png images failed with an error message of "• org.apache.fop.render.rtf.rtflib.rtfdoc.RtfExternalGraphic$ExternalGraphicException org.apache.fop.render.rtf.rtflib.rtfdoc.RtfExternalGraphic$ExternalGraphicException: The tag <fo:external-graphic> does not support png - image type"
• variablelistentry term names are repeated at the start of every paragraph in the variablelistentry, making it hard to read
• The formatting of variablelist has the text margin starting in the middle of the page and it is a very inefficient use of space, making it hard to read.
• The formatting in orderedlist and itemizedlist is incorrect when these elements are included within a paragraph, making it hard to read.

I this something that can be fixed, or is the action to be that I should take this upstream?

Also, is there some other kind of transformation scenario that can be used to get docbook into a word document?

[Radu]

Hi,

I'm afraid we do not have control over the limitations of the third party Apache FOP PDF processor we ship with Oxygen. Especially with RTF output which is probably not used much and no longer actively maintained by the project.
There are possible alternatives, maybe use the Pandoc converter to convert DocBook to Word:
https://pandoc.org
There are also tools for PDF to Word conversion.
The Antenna House commercial processor also seems to have an option for Word generation:
https://www.antennahouse.com/microsoft-word-output

Regards,
Radu