Nope, doesn't even come close - converting from FO XML and getting all the pagination correct in the output is a hugely complex job - probably why there's only ever been one solution that's even come close to getting it right - and even they (XEP that is) don't handle everything.
And BTW - who cares XEP is open source or not. We're only interested in the result (and the cost) not the software.
Exactly.
what about using pandoc to convert docbook to pdf ? Has anyone looked into this?
Nope, web page looked interesting so I gave it a try: Boost.Math: pdflatex couldn't handle some of the Unicode characters generated and bailed out. Boost.Type_traits: generated invalid tex file (pdflatex bailed out). Boost.Config: generated a PDF file, but wasn't much better than a plain text dump - you got bold and italics converted, but other than that all document structure was lost. John.