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From: Werner Punz <werpu@gmx.at>
Subject: Re: AW:  Re: AW:  Re: What PDF library or framework to create PDF
 on the   fly-->iText?
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:59:24 +0100
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I am new to birt myself, so take it with a grain of salt what I am 
saying here,
(better ask in the birt eclipse forum)
To my understanding there are various ways, one is programmatic,
so you just define some kind of servlet which renders it on the fly
and delivers it. (alternatively you can write yourself a jsf control ;-) )

The other one is, that the bird runtime comes with a complete web 
application which allows you to link to (which might be some kind of 
security problem)


Also have in mind, that birt still has some limitations, yesterday, I 
gave it a testrun on a collection of huge data, and it started to choke
on around thousand pages, csv is also no rendering target yet, but
for your purpose of having a form like pdf report, birt should do the 
job. Also you currently have to generate the report on the fly
later incarnations will have a save option integrated.

as for deployment info: http://www.eclipse.org/birt/deploy/


I would say, give it a testrun, if it can fit your needs...

If not there are various other options (jasper, fop, velocity,
itext etc...)


andreas.mitter@magnasteyr.com wrote:
> Hi!
> Thx for your answers...
> 
> I just have began with Eclispe Birt and it looks quite cool, but I have one question.
> Can I ran such reports directly from my jsp pages via a Button?
> If yes, how can I do that, because I didn't see anything on the BIRT Homepage.
> (I only saw, that you can ran it StandAlone and so on, but I want it that way:
> Press the button (pass some parameters through the button) and display the report!
> Is this possible with BIRT?
> 
> Regards
> Andy
> 
> -----Urspr�ngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: news [mailto:news@sea.gmane.org]Im Auftrag von Werner Punz
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 13. Dezember 2005 21:55
> An: users@myfaces.apache.org
> 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 <werpu@gmx.at>
>>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.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>andreas.mitter@magnasteyr.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>So you think FOP is not the best approach and idea?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>-----Urspr�ngliche Nachricht-----
>>>>Von: news [news@sea.gmane.org]Im Auftrag von Werner Punz
>>>>Gesendet: Dienstag, 13. Dezember 2005 14:21
>>>>An: users@myfaces.apache.org
>>>>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.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>andreas.mitter@magnasteyr.com 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
>>>>>
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