I'll let Christophe or Robin answer your first question.
> I also manage a large XML project for the CNRS http://eserve.org.uk/anr/
> and want to generate PDF books from the XML tagged documents we make.
> Can Wooki do this, please?
Wooki uses Doxia Converter [1] to convert some formats to other
formats, and FlyingSaucer [2] to convert from xhtml to PDF.
Apparently, you already have some piece of software to produce HTML
from your XML content, so you maybe could use FlyingSaucer too...
Don't you hesitate to ask me other questions about this subject.
[1] http://maven.apache.org/doxia/doxia-tools/doxia-converter/usage.html
[2] http://code.google.com/p/flying-saucer/
Kind regards,
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Bruno Verachten