[vwnc] Creating PDF document from within VisualWorks How to
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[vwnc] Creating PDF document from within VisualWorks How to
 
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Hello All, I have two questions:
A. I need to be able to create PDF documents from the VisualWorks application. Those documents are simple text documents such as reports, invoices, etc. Does anybody have any suggestion what is the best way of doing it ? B. I came across the SPDF library by Bruce Badger in the public repository which supposed to do just that. However there is no documentation of any sort besides few tests which supposed to show what is the library capable of doing. Does anybody have any documentation or information on how to use the SPDF ? Any information is greatly appreciated Truly, Mark Pirogovsky _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: [vwnc] Creating PDF document from within VisualWorks How to
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On Aug 18, 2009, at 9:18 PM, Mark Pirogovsky wrote: > Hello All, I have two questions: > > A. I need to be able to create PDF documents from the VisualWorks > application. > Those documents are simple text documents such as reports, invoices, > etc. > > Does anybody have any suggestion what is the best way of doing it ? > > > B. I came across the SPDF library by Bruce Badger in the public > repository which supposed to do just that. However there is no > documentation of any sort besides few tests which supposed to show > what > is the library capable of doing. > > Does anybody have any documentation or information on how to use > the SPDF ? > > Any information is greatly appreciated I know of at least two people who have used Cairo to generate PDFs for projects. Once upon a time, when I gave Cairo presentations at conference, I wrote the presentation in Cairo shown on the Screen from my own VW viewer, and then I could tell the slides to render as PDF. So it's certainly capable of doing it. Not sure what your constraints are and how they fit what you're doing. -- Travis Griggs Objologist "An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself." - Charles Dickens _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
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In reply to this post by Mark Pirogovsky-3
Download Apache FOP (http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/). This is a
program that can run from the command-line and can convert an XML format called XSL-FO into PDF. I just spent the last several months converting all of our reports into FOP format and I'm very impressed by it. We've not run across any major restrictions with it. We just get our Smalltalk application to write out the XML file with the data already embedded in and run fop. Suppose we call the file myReport.fo fop myReport.fo myReport.pdf There's your PDF file. You can - embed images and scale them to the proper size - draw tables with borders (with full control over internal borders) - have text that wraps lines - format text using center, left, right or justified - change fonts, font sizes, etc. - bold italic, underline, etc. - change text background colors and foreground colors All of this is controlled by a fairly easy to write XML file. Cool. David Buck Simberon Inc., www.simberon.com Mark Pirogovsky wrote: > Hello All, I have two questions: > > A. I need to be able to create PDF documents from the VisualWorks > application. > Those documents are simple text documents such as reports, invoices, etc. > > Does anybody have any suggestion what is the best way of doing it ? > > > B. I came across the SPDF library by Bruce Badger in the public > repository which supposed to do just that. However there is no > documentation of any sort besides few tests which supposed to show what > is the library capable of doing. > > Does anybody have any documentation or information on how to use the SPDF ? > > Any information is greatly appreciated > > Truly, > > Mark Pirogovsky > _______________________________________________ > vwnc mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc > > _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: [vwnc] Creating PDF document from within VisualWorks How to
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Mark Pirogovsky wrote:
> > Hello All, I have two questions: > > A. I need to be able to create PDF documents from the VisualWorks > application. > Those documents are simple text documents such as reports, invoices, etc. Another option, especially if you're interested in template-based document creation: - create document templates in the Open Document Format (ODF) - "fill in the blanks" by modifying the underlying XML - use JODConverter to convert the document to PDF (either use the web service, or JNI) JODConverter homepage: http://www.artofsolving.com/opensource/jodconverter _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: [vwnc] Creating PDF document from within VisualWorks How to
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In reply to this post by davidbuck
All the same lines, I can strongly recommend http://www.princexml.com.
It's a CSS + XML/XHTML based formatter. I've recently built and deployed a system using prince for a client and I was very happy with it. Not free, but as VW users know, sometimes the best stuff isn't. On 19/08/2009, at 7:26 PM, David Buck wrote: > Download Apache FOP (http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/). This is a > program that can run from the command-line and can convert an XML > format > called XSL-FO into PDF. I just spent the last several months > converting > all of our reports into FOP format and I'm very impressed by it. > We've > not run across any major restrictions with it. We just get our > Smalltalk application to write out the XML file with the data already > embedded in and run fop. Suppose we call the file myReport.fo > > fop myReport.fo myReport.pdf > > There's your PDF file. You can > - embed images and scale them to the proper size > - draw tables with borders (with full control over internal > borders) > - have text that wraps lines > - format text using center, left, right or justified > - change fonts, font sizes, etc. > - bold italic, underline, etc. > - change text background colors and foreground colors > > All of this is controlled by a fairly easy to write XML file. Cool. > > David Buck > Simberon Inc., > www.simberon.com Antony Blakey -------------------------- CTO, Linkuistics Pty Ltd Ph: 0438 840 787 Lack of will power has caused more failure than lack of intelligence or ability. -- Flower A. Newhouse _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: [vwnc] Creating PDF document from within VisualWorks How to
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In reply to this post by Mark Pirogovsky-3
Also google for "PDFReactor". We've been using it for years now and are very happy with it. _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: [vwnc] Creating PDF document from within VisualWorks How to
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In reply to this post by davidbuck
Hi David,
You are right about XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects) and the FOP processor! I have been using it for several years now, through various versions of the tool chain. We are using the approach at Key, now, for our Release Notes documents and other technical papers. Just to add to your list of useful attributes of this approach: - XSL-FO does not enforce a particular final published format on your documents. The FOP processor can turn them into PDF, HTML, and other formats. RTF is one of those, though I have not used that one myself. - XSL-FO will be familiar in many ways to people who know CSS, because many of the style attribute values have been kept the same - Major document XML vocabularies like DocBook already come with XSL transforms to generate XSL-FO files from your original document in those vocabularies. - You automatically achieve the separation of logical content and presentation, without losing control -- I have often tweaked XSL transforms supplied with a vocabulary or even written my own from scratch, to achieve my own preferred formatting without forcing that formatting into my document's logical content. - Things like bidirectionally-linked tables of contents are easy to achieve (cf: automatic, once you have the XSL transform in hand) without the author being concerned about them during the writing process. etc., etc. Gregory Bourassa David Buck wrote: Download Apache FOP (http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/). This is a program that can run from the command-line and can convert an XML format called XSL-FO into PDF. I just spent the last several months converting all of our reports into FOP format and I'm very impressed by it. We've not run across any major restrictions with it. We just get our Smalltalk application to write out the XML file with the data already embedded in and run fop. Suppose we call the file myReport.fo fop myReport.fo myReport.pdf There's your PDF file. You can - embed images and scale them to the proper size - draw tables with borders (with full control over internal borders) - have text that wraps lines - format text using center, left, right or justified - change fonts, font sizes, etc. - bold italic, underline, etc. - change text background colors and foreground colors All of this is controlled by a fairly easy to write XML file. Cool. David Buck Simberon Inc., www.simberon.com Mark Pirogovsky wrote:Hello All, I have two questions: A. I need to be able to create PDF documents from the VisualWorks application. Those documents are simple text documents such as reports, invoices, etc. Does anybody have any suggestion what is the best way of doing it ? B. I came across the SPDF library by Bruce Badger in the public repository which supposed to do just that. However there is no documentation of any sort besides few tests which supposed to show what is the library capable of doing. Does anybody have any documentation or information on how to use the SPDF ? Any information is greatly appreciated Truly, Mark Pirogovsky _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc_______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc Key Technology, Inc. Disclaimer Notice - The
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In reply to this post by davidbuck
Here's a "Hello World" document in XSL-FO:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"> <fo:layout-master-set> <fo:simple-page-master master-name="simple" page-height="29.7cm" page-width="21cm" margin-left="2.5cm" margin-right="2.5cm"> <fo:region-body margin-top="3cm"/> </fo:simple-page-master> </fo:layout-master-set> <fo:page-sequence master-reference="simple"> <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body"> <fo:block>Hello, World</fo:block> </fo:flow> </fo:page-sequence> </fo:root>You're seeing mostly the boilerplate page layout stuff. The line with Hello, World would be where your actual content goes. David Buck Simberon Inc. www.simberon.com David Buck wrote: Download Apache FOP (http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/). This is a program that can run from the command-line and can convert an XML format called XSL-FO into PDF. I just spent the last several months converting all of our reports into FOP format and I'm very impressed by it. We've not run across any major restrictions with it. We just get our Smalltalk application to write out the XML file with the data already embedded in and run fop. Suppose we call the file myReport.fo fop myReport.fo myReport.pdf There's your PDF file. You can - embed images and scale them to the proper size - draw tables with borders (with full control over internal borders) - have text that wraps lines - format text using center, left, right or justified - change fonts, font sizes, etc. - bold italic, underline, etc. - change text background colors and foreground colors All of this is controlled by a fairly easy to write XML file. Cool. David Buck Simberon Inc., www.simberon.com Mark Pirogovsky wrote:Hello All, I have two questions: A. I need to be able to create PDF documents from the VisualWorks application. Those documents are simple text documents such as reports, invoices, etc. Does anybody have any suggestion what is the best way of doing it ? B. I came across the SPDF library by Bruce Badger in the public repository which supposed to do just that. However there is no documentation of any sort besides few tests which supposed to show what is the library capable of doing. Does anybody have any documentation or information on how to use the SPDF ? Any information is greatly appreciated Truly, Mark Pirogovsky _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc_______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
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