Re: Suggestions for creating a PDF table
Kirk Strauser wrote: Short question: Is there a good library for generating HTML-style tables with the equivalent of colspans, automatically sized columns, etc. that can render directly to PDF? Longer question: I'm re-doing a big chunk of locally-written code. I have a report-generating function that takes a list of lists of lists as input and returns either a PDF, an HTML table, or an Excel spreadsheet as requested. For example, input might look like: makereport('html', headers=['Invoice number', 'Customer', 'Price'], data=[ [['123', 'John Doe', '$50.00'], ['Ordered on 2008-01-01 via the website']], [['124', 'Peter Bilt', '$25.99'], ['Mail via African swallow']] ]) Now, I have a similar transformation to PDF via pdflatex. This works fairly well but requires a bunch of temp files and subprocesses, and I've never been 100% happy with the LaTeX output (you have to calculate your own column widths, for instance). Since I plan to re-write this anyway, I'd like to find a more widely used library if one was available. Short answer: LaTeX should be good. Use XML source; XSLT to TeXML; TeXML to LaTeX ( uses a python program); compile to PDF. Longer answer: Can you provide a minimal example of the kind of LaTeX source you would ideally like ? If not, your problem is with LaTeX itself, which has if anything __too_many__ ways of controlling tables rather than inadequate ways. If so, we may be able to help with the rather arcane transformation into TeXML format. As for all the temp files that LaTeX creates, they are easily dealt with using a makefile or whatever. Bye for now, Ken -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Suggestions for creating a PDF table
Kirk Strauser wrote: Short question: Is there a good library for generating HTML-style tables with the equivalent of colspans, automatically sized columns, etc. that can render directly to PDF? Longer question: I'm re-doing a big chunk of locally-written code. I have a report-generating function that takes a list of lists of lists as input and returns either a PDF, an HTML table, or an Excel spreadsheet as requested. For example, input might look like: makereport('html', headers=['Invoice number', 'Customer', 'Price'], data=[ [['123', 'John Doe', '$50.00'], ['Ordered on 2008-01-01 via the website']], [['124', 'Peter Bilt', '$25.99'], ['Mail via African swallow']] ]) This would result in HTML like: Invoice number Customer Price 123 John Doe $50.00 Ordered on 2008-01-01 via the website 124 Peter Bilt $25.99 Mail via African swallow Note particularly how the explanatory notes for each invoice are similar in appearance to the "primary" report lines they're associated with. Now, I have a similar transformation to PDF via pdflatex. This works fairly well but requires a bunch of temp files and subprocesses, and I've never been 100% happy with the LaTeX output (you have to calculate your own column widths, for instance). Since I plan to re-write this anyway, I'd like to find a more widely used library if one was available. ReportLab seemed *almost* perfect, except that it doesn't support colspans. As I hope I demonstrated in the example, most of our reports depend on that ability. So, again, any thoughts on a PDF generator that can generate tables with the same kind of flexibility as HTML? It does support the equivalent of colspans. See page 75 of the userguide manual. -Larry -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list