iText is indeed used inside Scriptura, which is mentioned in the documentation 
supplied with the product:

<quote>
This product includes software developed by the following organizations:
- iText Project ( http://www.lowagie.com/iText/ )
  For more information about license acknowlegements, refer to Mozilla Public 
License.
</quote>

The complete MPL v1.1 is also an integral part of the documentation (and linked 
from the above-mentioned reference).

All patches applied on the iText library are shipped with Scriptura and the PDF 
Producer line is left untouched. As a result, every Scriptura-generated PDF 
document in the world (and there must be millions by now), mentions iText.

Inventive Group has also purchased 'iText in Action' and with this action 
supported the project financially, albeit admittedly in a very small way.

As for Inventive Group's website, there is indeed no mention of iText; but 
neither is there any mention of the other F/OSS libraries Scriptura 
incorporates, so you can rest assured that iText is not discriminated in that 
respect.

Finally, a mailing list is not the proper place to discuss this kind of 
subject. I'm sure that this can be settled amicably through some other channel, 
like in the way we discussed our problems with iTexts font processing speed at 
JavaPolis two years ago; where, IIRC, you were not as opposed to Inventive 
Group's use of iText as you are now. Maybe the champagne helped to sweeten the 
bitter pill at that time :-)


Regards,
Bert Vingerhoets - Research & Development
Inventive Designers NV

Phone: +32 3 821 01 70
Fax: +32 3 821 01 71
Email: Bert_Vingerhoets at inventivegroup dot com
http://www.inventivegroup.com/


-----Original Message-----
From: Bruno Lowagie [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday 16 July 2009 09:21
To: Post all your questions about iText here
Subject: Re: [iText-questions] (no subject)

Bert Vingerhoets wrote:
> Another way to render custom XML into a PDF document (although Bruno might not
 > like hearing this) is to write an XSLT stylesheet instead of Java
code, that
> converts the XML to XSL-FO and then use an existing XSL-FO renderer such as
> Apache's FOP to convert the intermediary output into PDF.

Actually, I use this approach in a project at Ghent University.
Every student at the university has a track record of enrollments,
curricula, payments, etc... For some students this is very straight
forward: one contract, one subscription, one study program.
For others, it can get quite complex: they switch courses, switch
study programs, switch contracts,...
Also the fee that has to be paid depends on the courses and as there
curricula aren't always known in advance, students often pay part of
there invoice up front, and part of it as soon as there curriculum is
known.

All this information is kept in different places: their academic
carreer is different from their payment history.

In the past, it was very hard to check all this data. An administrator
needed different applications to find all the necessary data.

So a colleague and I wrote an application that bundles all this
information in one XML file. I wrote a series of XSLT files that
renders this XML to HTML so that an administrator can see the complete
picture in one glance. (Very handy when a student phones the
administration asking why he has to pay that much.)

The XSLT also generates a "human readable" letter explaining the
invoice in "human readable" language.

That part can be rendered to PDF using HTMLWorker in the form of
an invoice for the student.

So no: I'm not against the use of XSLT.

> If you have a somewhat larger scale environment and need to process
> lots of requests, maybe Scriptura DocumentFlow might suit your needs.

Note that iText is used inside Scriptura, but in spite of what
you'd expect, there is no mention of iText on any site from
Inventive Designers whatsoever (at least: I didn't find any link
to iText). Therefore I have the strong impression that Inventive
Group does very little effort to promote iText, although they are
making good money with it.

That's very counter-productive.

Commercial use of Free Software is accepted, but a company "sins"
against the spirit of F/OSS if it doesn't do anything in return
to support the F/OSS projects it uses.

There is however another company that offers an XSL:FO solution:
http://www.renderx.com/
That company, although also commercial (as is Scripture), is really
"iText-friendly".

Dear Bert, can you tell me if Inventive Group is respecting the
MPL license? More specifically: when Scriptura is rebranded, how
does your company assured that iText isn't rebranded in the process?
You are aware of the fact that it is forbidden to change the iText
producer line, aren't you?

best regards,
Bruno

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the opportunity to enter the BlackBerry Developer Challenge. See full prize  
details at: http://p.sf.net/sfu/Challenge
_______________________________________________
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[email protected]
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Buy the iText book: http://www.1t3xt.com/docs/book.php
Check the site with examples before you ask questions: 
http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/
You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/

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