Hi Kevin, I've used JasperReports, which calls iText. I had some ideas for how this could be used in Isis, aside from licensing issues, along these lines...
A Report is itself an Object, encapsulating the details of what we want to "print", such as filters, fields (and maybe expressions defining composite/ derived fields) all taken from a Domain Object. Also agregate fields (total, average, max..) and grouping "bands" in which these agregates would appear. Isis could create a "default report", maybe as a context menu operation from within Viewer. User could then add or remove properties on the Report and save it under a different name such as CustXyzReport. It would be nice to handle "joins" over >1 domain objects, and maybe styling. Best Regards Mike Burton ( from iPhone) On 20 Sep 2011, at 17:52, Siegfried Goeschl <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Kevin, > > unfortunately I have a lot of experience but you would need to explain how > the PDF generation should work in your opinion regarding content and layouting > > +) the iText approach is more or less building a PDF by code > > +) Apache PDFBox allows filling out PDF forms and creation of simple PDFs > based on text data > > +) Apache FOP is a way to go but FOP templates and XSLT is, well, difficult > > +) my latest approach is converting HTML to PDF using "wkhtmltopdf" > (http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/) > > The main question is the layout - is it static or user-defined? > > Cheers, > > Siegfried Goeschl > > > > On 14.09.11 16:23, Kevin Meyer - KMZ wrote: >> Dear Rob and Jeff, >> >> Having a quick look at iText, its licensing is definitely not ASF >> compatible, so I could not add the results to the Isis domain. >> >> One of the comments [1] in Rob's referenced TSS article suggests >> using Apache FOP [2]. I'll look into this first (perhaps I'll even be able >> to create the XSLT stylesheet in OpenOffice - that'll be a real winner! >> >> Regards, >> Kevin >> >> [1] http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?track=NL- >> 461&ad=847070&thread_id=62927&asrc=EM_NLN_14864357&uid=2 >> 785788#349513 >> >> [2] http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/ >> >> On 14 Sep 2011 at 9:49, Robert Matthews wrote: >> >>> Kevin >>> >>> I had a look at iText (http://itextpdf.com/) in the past, but have not >>> used it. It struck me that it would be possible to use Isis to to >>> actually design the document, not just render it. Also, there is >>> posting on TSS ( >>> http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?track=NL-461&ad=847070&thread_id=62927&asrc=EM_NLN_14864357&uid=2785788 >>> <http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?track=NL-461&ad=847070&thread_id=62927&asrc=EM_NLN_14864357&uid=2785788>) >>> titled "From java.awt.print.Printable to PDF" that sounds interesting >>> (although I haven't read it yet). >>> >>> Regards >>> Rob >>> >>> On 13/09/11 18:25, Kevin Meyer - KMZ wrote: >>>> Dear all, >>>> >>>> Please could I ask for some assistance in creating Isis domain classes >>>> to support creation of PDF files? >>>> >>>> Does anyone have any experience with using java to create PDF files? >>>> >>>> I am guessing that some sort of template would be required (to specify >>>> what goes where), and a way of telling the PDF domain classes which >>>> properties should be used. >>>> >>>> Since Isis does not support documents as a value type yet (see ISIS- >>>> 115 [1]), I will probably use the email domain classes to send the result >>>> to a recipient, assuming that I can add attachment support (if it isn't >>>> already there). >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> Kevin >>>> >>>> [1] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ISIS-115 >> >>
