Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] PDF support for phpgw

[Andrea Rota]

Hello,

Il ven, 2003-09-26 alle 00:18, Dan Kuykendall ha scritto:
> Heres an even better solution than some java app.
> http://xml.apache.org/fop/
> 
> It is an additional requirement, but its probably worth it for those 
> that want to print pdf's

I've been using Apache FOP for generating PDF documents for about two
years, and I find the XSL:FO way of doing things really powerful,
extensible and easy to use.
With XSLT you can do just about everything you could need to handle the
"presentation layer" starting from XML data. I find XML Include really
useful for assembling modular documents and reports that can have common
areas (company info, logo, page numbering, barcodes, etc.) while
preserving the possibility of applying almost any style one can think of
and need to data coming from the "backend".

While there are non-Java alternatives for generating PDFs with XSL:FO
(e.g. PassiveTeX - http://www.tei-c.org.uk/Software/passivetex/), Apache
FOP is the most complete free implementation of the XSL:FO
recommendation to date.

Maybe the best way to use it would be to write a web services (SOAP or
XMLRPC) wrapper around Apache FOP and access it from phpgw.

I would not use lower-level PDF engines: while there are excellent
engines out there, using them would probably mean wasting development
efforts in doing what is already (and freely) available.

Of course, I don't like relying on Java and JVMs, but unless a C or C++
Apache FOP comes out there are no viable alternatives. I must say I
don't know whether Apache FOP runs on free JVMs - I started using it
with Sun's one and ended up using that up to date.

-- 
Regards,
__
Andrea Rota
Xelera - Soluzioni GNU/Linux
http://www.xelera.it
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