On Jul 20, 2008, at 7:52 AM, Martijn Korse wrote:
I wrote a class that could do all the calculations and store the
information
about all the lines and spacing information.
To keep things clean, i decided to overload the drawText function, by
extending the Zend_Pdf_Page class and writing my own function.
But since the $page object is created form the Zend_Pdf class i had to
extend that class too, in order to let it instantiate my new page
class.
The problem is: both classes are filled with private variables that
make
extending them impossible. So, i'm left with two options:
1) modifying the Zend Framework classes so they can hadle my new
functionality. I don't want this, because then i can never upgrade
anymore
2) copying a lot code to my own classes to be able to write the
output. this
i obviously also don't want.
I'm posting this here, to get some feedback. Maybe i'm overlooking
some
getter/setter functions?
The Zend_Pdf_Page::rawWrite() method was intended to allow you to
write your own data to the page's content stream so subclassing
wouldn't strictly be necessary. Unfortunately, it had an empty
implementation. I've written an implementation for that method and
committed it to the framework trunk:
http://framework.zend.com/issues/browse/ZF-3704
This should eliminate your need to subclass Zend_Pdf and Zend_Pdf_Page
at all. Instead, move your code to a helper layout class which can
call rawWrite() on the appropriate page object.
Maybe someone can explain to me if this was done intentionaly and why?
Zend_Pdf is one of the oldest framework components. Most of the core
classes haven't changed much since the initial implementations over
two years ago. I believe this was probably just a mistaken choice
between 'private' and 'protected' when the classes were first written.
I see you've created ZF-3701 to address the visibility declarations,
which I endorse.
I should mention that Kevin McArthur and I have been collaborating on
a comprehensive update to Zend_Pdf for the last several months. One of
the most significant pieces of the project is a true text layout
engine, which handles calculation of line breaks, text alignment, and
more. This message describes the enhancements:
http://www.nabble.com/Upcoming-Zend_Pdf-Enhancements-td16509067.html
The project has grown a bit since sending that original message,
resulting in a complete rewrite of Zend_Pdf's core, which has taken
much longer than expected. Fortunately, the core rewrite was finished
last week and we are in the midst of final testing for the commercial
project that spurred the development.
I would estimate that we're about two weeks away from being ready to
post our reference implementation along with the proposals for what
would become Zend_Pdf 2.0. I will be posting additional details to the
fw-formats list when we're ready to release the code into the wild.
--
Willie Alberty
Spenlen Media
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://spenlen.com/
