(comments inline)
On 15.12.2003 22:27:56 Matthew Case wrote:
About a year ago I developed a database-enabled text-parsing engine that can
be used to create letters and faxes and other happy things that the
business-types here like. The rendering is done using FOP 0.20.5, so my
question is relevant and two fold. The first part is XSL-FO related, and the
second part is FOP related.
I'm wondering if it would be possible for me to embed bitmap data directly
into an XSL-FO document? I'd like to query a logo out of my database and
slap it right in there instead of saving it to an external file first. I've
seen the instream-foreign-object tag and it seems promising but i haven't
seen any use of it, much less embedding a bitmap directly in the xml before
rendering. Is this possible?
Yes.
Has anyone done it?
I dont' know.
The FOP-related question is: Even if this is possible from an XSL-FO
standpoint, is it possible using FOP 0.20.5?
Yes. Create a FOP extension as described here:
http://xml.apache.org/fop/dev/extensions.html
As an example for a FOP extension you can have a look at my pet project,
Krysalis
Barcode (in the process of being renamed to Barcode4J), at
http://barcode4j.krysalis.org. The relevant sources are here:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/barcode4j/barcode4j/src/fop-0.20.5/java/org/krysalis/barcode4j/fop0205/
I think this extension should give you some idea on how to create an
extension that can load a bitmap embedded in a
fo:instream-foreign-object. Not everything's there, you might need to
modify the FOP sources a bit, but it's definately a possibility.
Deadlines are looming. Answers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in
advance.
Ok, you've got a deadline, so I would suggest you take the easier route
to create a servlet that reads the bitmap from your database. In this
case you only embed a URL in a fo:external-graphic to references the
image you want to appear.
I hope this helps. If you decide to create that extension for the
in-stream bitmaps it would be cool if you could share it as I remember
that this is a topic that has come up before. Good luck.
Jeremias Maerki
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