hello ryan.. > Given that you are programmatically creating the xls, you can > programmatically create your PDF also. No need to convert > from xls->PDF, it > may be easier to just convert to PDF from your original data.
yes - i agree. i like going straight from the data to PDF. my only concern with this approach is: 1) at the moment - i have no experience with libs like iText that allow you to programmatically produce PDF from raw data. i am not sure how difficult it would be to stuff data in to a PDF document using "real world" requirements (graphs, logo images and so on). 2) as our environment stands right now - we have numerous "template" files (Excel .XLT files) that are developed by our product development people. once they have the template looking nice - our process (using POI) just pumps data programmatically in to a datasheet in the workbook. all of the other sheets on the template then - just refer to the datasheet. although the end result is not trivial - the process - from a development point of view is pretty straight forward. using the approach above (i think ?) would necessitate the development of parallel "templates" in PDF format. then we would simply drive data in to the PDF template... > FOP is for > XML-> PDF and iText is for programmatically creating PDF files. understood - this is also what i gather from reading the info i have found so far. > > I don't work on the Excel side of POI so I don't know if > there is something > for converting Excel -> XML. If there is, it *might* be > easier to do FOP. agreed! it would be neat if this did exist. > But you would still have to convert this XML into the XML > namespace that FOP > understands, believe me this is not trivial. understood. also ... how would you move images and logos on the XLS template in to the XML definition? i guess it could be done with something like an HTML href (just thinking outloud). > I believe iText > would probably > fit your needs better. I would just generate the PDF from the > data you used > to create the Excel. agreed - i just need to gather more info regarding the process of creating a "non-trivial" PDF template and then driving information in to the template. does anyone have any comment on this? thanks so much for all of the feedback! mark
