Peter, We're also generating PDFs using custom velocity templates to render "data", stylesheets to transform the data into xsl:fo, and then the fop to generate a pdf. if there's a more generic tool available, i'd be most happy to check it out. anything to use more "tested" tools. any ideas when you might be able to make this available?
~mark > -----Original Message----- > From: Peter Harrison [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 4:34 AM > To: Velocity Users List > Subject: Re: VM templates producing PDFs > > > On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 20:32, Ryan Lea wrote: > > Hi, > > > > Have just read on another thread that velocity has been > used to produce > > custome PDF's. I had been thinking of using something like > cocoon and > > xslt. > > > > Sooo .... was just wondering how many people have used velocity to > > create PDF's and probably more to the point, how? > > We have used Velocity to create both PDF's and OpenOffice documents. > > In fact the same template now creates both HTML and PDF. > > The template defines the structure but not the layout. The > first stage our > system goes through is rendering XML from the template > through velocity. This > process imbeds the data into the template. > > The second stage is a XSLT transform depending on the target > format. If the > required result is HTML the XML is moved directly into HTML > using our HTML > Transform. If the target format is PDF we have a XSLT > transform which turns > it into an intermediate XML. This is then put through a final > third transform > to create XSL:FO - Formatting Objects. We then use a open > source FO Engine to > render the XSL:FO into a PDF. > > We also have a more simple approach which will mean you have > to write special > XML format in order to create PDF's - essentially we drop the > intermediate > few stages and go directly to the final two transforms before > rendering. > > There are also different ways of handling the output. The > simple way is that > it is output from a servlet - the user just gets the PDF. > However, in our > line of work we often need to also store the document. We have other > utilities which can generate the document, save it in a > database, and also > return it to the user. We also generate multiple documents > all in the same > request - although we obviously don't open them for the user > all at the same > time. > > What even better - we will be making all of this open source. > I'm thinking > about dropping it into velocity tools - although what we have > now would be > much more than just velocity tools. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
