I've been procrastinating over installing fop and getting it running, because it has such a hairy reputation. Once I got the right java toolkit installed it was really pretty straightforward, though. Robert Stayton's howto stuff is terrific. I still need to get a better handle on the customization issues, but now I can make pdf's from docbook source in a relatively straightforward two-step process with some control over the results. Looks way better already than my previous results using a jade wrapper script.