Actually no, and yes...
The problem is, PDF is a printing target (sort of an intermediate printer)
Thus if the client itself, which is the browser can print to PDF in one
way or the other, then you can push the form directly into PDF,
but the way I see it there is no real way to have
a) a html form
b) push the form into PDF in a platform independent way.
c) that you can rely of having a totally correct output (you basically
geht what you would get with a print preview)
Theoretically it could be possible to have PDF as rendering frontend
for JSF controls, but nobody has done such a work so far (if pdf can
handle server connections at all, otherwise forget it)
It would be a huge rewrite on the rendering kit part to have that one
pdfied if it is possible at all.
Coocoon uses an entirely different approach to achieve the result of
going the html and pdf route:
Cocoon has to my knowledge xml metadata which then is pushed via xsl
transformations into different rendering targets (sort of what fop does
also but more dynamical by having a page flow scripting language)
JSF is less data centric and more component centric, such the PDF
rendering part if you want that automatically has to be done on
component level.
Either way, component level or cocoon in both cases the pdf generation
is done on the server ony the fly like it would be done with a reporting
engine.
You cannot rely on the browser of beign able to render PDF and that you
can control the rendering process from within javascript.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi!
Regarding to your email it's not possible to transform a JSP directly into a
PDF File???
The reason I ask is the following:
Just imagine, the user uses a search form where he can constrain the search
result with his search constrains.
Then he gets some result -->Now I want, that the user is able to print this
result...
Is this not possible?Has nobody ever experienced such problems?
Regards
Andy
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: news [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Auftrag von Werner Punz
Gesendet: Dienstag, 13. Dezember 2005 21:55
An: [email protected]
Betreff: Re: AW: Re: What PDF library or framework to create PDF on the
fly-->iText?
Well to get it right, the original poster asked for a way to render
the jsf files into pdf automatically, this is neither possible with
xsl-fo nor any other templating mechanism mentioned (cocoon and a bunch
of others)
What probably could be achieved would be some cocoon like intermediate
rendering step which renders the page
a) into a jsf page given a certain base data
b) into a pdf page
but this is out of scope for simply applying fop (xsl-fo) you will end
up with something cocoonish that way and it is probably out of the time
scope of the original poster to implement such a thing.
If you do not want to spend time on a research project into code
generation I really can recommend, to split the view into following concerns
a) a simple HTML Rendering of your forms, which already is done in JSF
b) a reporting part which extracts nice pdfs closely looking like your
forms, this can be done with any reporting tool you like,
xsl-fo, birt, japser reports or whatever technology to use as reporting
frontend.
Alan Biggs wrote:
FOP is a standard but almost
not used, so design tools are scarce,
Some commercial products use FOP for rendering, such as Altova Stylevision and
Stylus Studio (both of which you can get free trials of).
I believe FOP is used quote a lot when it fits the scenario. The FOP site
itself does what the original poster asked - renders a PDF version of each of
its HTML pages.
you should probably give visual
tools in conjunction with reporting engines a shot
Altova Stylevision is a visual tool/reporting engine based on XML with FOP
integration.
Not sure about Stylus, but Stylevision I believe allows you to import an HTML
file and then generate the PDF from the result. It will also generate the XSLT
for you to plug into your favourite XML library.
FOP is undergoing a long and complete rewrite to support complex features which
were hard to do in the previous version, but the current release is fairly
stable and functional for the more basic layout tasks. If you are using complex
layouts, you will probably get frustrated. (whatever technology you use!)
Alan B.
----- Original Message -----
From: Werner Punz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 6:56 am
Subject: Re: AW: Re: What PDF library or framework to create PDF on the
fly-->iText?
Fop is just another approach of going from a meta description to a
result with different rendering targets. FOP is a standard but almost
not used, so design tools are scarce, you should probably give visual
tools in conjunction with reporting engines a shot:
Following ones come to my mind
Jasper Reports with one of the Design tools (which there are a
handful)Eclipse Birt which is free and looks also very good.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
So you think FOP is not the best approach and idea?
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: news [EMAIL PROTECTED] Auftrag von Werner Punz
Gesendet: Dienstag, 13. Dezember 2005 14:21
An: [email protected]
Betreff: Re: What PDF library or framework to create PDF on the
fly-->iText?
There is no direct way to do that, you only can simulate the
form layout
some mentioned cocoon, but that one is only usable that way if
you use
cocoon as html frontend as well, but that seems to be out of the
question, I can recommend to think about simulating your form in PDF
with the given data,
BIRT seems to be quite good for this area since it allows various
datasources and a viusal design.
Handcoding that stuff via iText is not recommendable, been there
done> that too much code.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I already asked some days ago, now I had time to look a bit at
iText and
after that I'm not really smarter than before.
I'm not sure if this library will help me.
I want to do the following:
The Myfaces JSF Page is normally shown to the user (some results
from a
report or some text from the database)
Now I want to have a button, which generates a PDF File out of
this screen.
So the PDF Creating must be done on the fly (depending on what
the user
sees)
How can I do that?
Any examples?
Thx, Regards
Andy
______________________________________________________________________
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom
they are
addressed. If you have received this email in error please
notify your
system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email
message has
been swept for the presence of computer viruses.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________>
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they
are addressed. If you have received this email in error please
notify> your system manager.
This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept
for the presence of computer viruses.
______________________________________________________________________>
______________________________________________________________________
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they
are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify
your system manager.
This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept
for the presence of computer viruses.
______________________________________________________________________
