How is this project going?<div><br></div><div>Something that I'm interested in playing with at some point: If you want to generate reports by hand (custom parameters) you might find it advantageous (and platform ambiguous) to use HTML based reports and apply a print style sheet: <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint/">http://www.alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint/</a></div>
<div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint/"></a><div class="gmail_quote">On 16 February 2011 21:05, MacGyveR <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:macgyver@thedumbterminal.co.uk">macgyver@thedumbterminal.co.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div><div></div><div class="h5">On Monday 14 Feb 2011, Peter Childs wrote:<br>
> On 14 February 2011 19:26, Peter Childs <<a href="mailto:pchilds@bcs.org">pchilds@bcs.org</a>> wrote:<br>
> > On 14 February 2011 19:04, Mike Evans <<a href="mailto:mike@tandem.f9.co.uk">mike@tandem.f9.co.uk</a>> wrote:<br>
> >> I would suggest you look at XML and XSL-FO rather than HTML<br>
> >><br>
> >> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSL_Formatting_Objects" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSL_Formatting_Objects</a><br>
> >><br>
> >> If you're not scared of Java then there is always the apache FOP project<br>
> >> which is a XSL-FO print driver. One set of mark up can be transformed<br>
> >> into any of: PDF, PS, PCL, AFP, XML (area tree representation), Print,<br>
> >> AWT and PNG, and to a lesser extent, RTF and TXT.<br>
> >><br>
> >> There are also XSL-FO processors for C/C++ and probably Python, though<br>
> >> I've never used them.<br>
> >><br>
> >> Mike<br>
> ><br>
> > Brain Melt Down.<br>
> ><br>
> > Its a file format then? So are there standard tools for dealing with it<br>
> > right or what?<br>
> ><br>
> > I don't understand....<br>
> ><br>
> ><br>
> > Peter.<br>
><br>
> Oh Right.....<br>
><br>
> so XSL describe a document and how to takes xml data to produce an end<br>
> product.<br>
><br>
> So I need an XML based method to describe by document.<br>
><br>
> Now I wonder what that would be? Looks fine for HTML but I'm dealing in<br>
> paper....<br>
><br>
> Peter.<br>
<br>
</div></div>Steps would be:<br>
<br>
1) Generate/write your documents in XML, using your own tags to give<br>
structure, such as paragraph breaks, heading, columns, images etc..<br>
<br>
2) Create a XSL style sheet that will transform your XML into XSL-FO.<br>
<br>
2a) Create a XSL style sheet to HTML for debugging/preview (optional but<br>
handy)<br>
<br>
3) Use the example java code on the FOP site to build a converter that will<br>
convert the XSL-FO into PDF:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/1.0/embedding.html#render-with-xslt" target="_blank">http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/1.0/embedding.html#render-with-xslt</a><br>
<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>