Michael Hipp wrote:
> This whole issue has been the one nearly insoluble problem in my apps. I'd 
> look forward to collaborating on a solution.

Thank you for summarizing various directions to go with this. I've had 
it in my mind to keep the Dabo report writer rfxml format, but switch 
the backend from reportlab to wx.PostscriptDC. Lots of this work is 
already done, because I had to implement drawing to a PaintDC to make 
the Report Designer's visual canvas work. And in lots of ways, it works 
better than reportlab does. Also, there are just some inconsistencies 
between how reportlab does things and how wx does things, resulting in 
the visual design surface not exactly rendering what you get in the 
final pdf output.

Don't get me wrong, reportlab is a great and useful toolkit. It's just 
that it would be so much better to use wx if at all possible (and the 
more I think about it the more I'm convinced it isn't only possible but 
in fact straightforward).

If we just switched to the wx stuff, it would be consistent, and we'd be 
able to print and preview any type of report in a multiplatform way. Of 
course, we can go from the Postscript to any other format we want, 
including pdf, plain text, png, html, latex, whatever.

If you really really can't stand XML (but please look at 
dabodemo/reports/invoice.rfxml before passing final judgment), there's 
already a way to drive dabo's report writer using plain python (and if 
you want, you could then have the writer save it as python or xml format).

In short, I think the dabo report writer is almost there, we just need 
to swap out the reportlab backend and replace it with something else.


-- 
pkm ~ http://paulmcnett.com


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