Re: Report generation

pdflib is wonderful but...

The learning curve is high. For instance: the coordinate system is basically *upside down* starting from the bottom left hand corner of the page. The formatting is fairly low level too-- you have to take in to consideration character spacing, line spacing, font metrics.... You can even draw paths but i have yet to attempt this (and I don't think I want to).

For simplicity this doesn't compare to something like crystal reports but if you have the time you could make some really nice pdf reports with pdflib. For pdf generation with php fpdf is also worth noting:

http://www.fpdf.org/

the api is much simpler than pdflib but it is php native so it will work without having to install pdflib. I am actually starting to like the api better than pdflib but I don't need to get very complicated with my pdf files...

culley

>>> "Ian Harding" <ianh(at)tpchd(dot)org> 02/19/02 09:55AM >>>
I use pdflib to generate pdf from database results. It is a library, with no knobs on it like Access or Crystal, but it is rock solid and has scripting language bindings for perl (ack) and tcl among others. c is native.

It will work great in the environment you describe. It is licensed under the Aladdin Free Public License, which should be fine. There are others.

www.pdflib.com

Ian A. Harding
Programmer/Analyst II
Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department
(253) 798-3549
mailto: iharding(at)tpchd(dot)org

>>> Rich Shepard <rshepard(at)appl-ecosys(dot)com> 02/15/02 06:25AM >>>
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Roderick A. Anderson wrote:

> Haven't tried it but I came across this.
>
> http://datavision.sourceforge.net/
>
> It is suppose to be Crystal Reports like.
>
> Down side, to me at least, is it is Java. My success with Java
> applications - the ones I really want - has been less that stellar,
> therefore I haven't been willing to spend the time exploring this.

Rod,

Thanks for the pointer. And, I agree about Java (despite having a friend
who's quite the expert with it). A few years ago I tried one app (it might
have been MoneyDance) that required me to get an earlier version of the JRE
in order to run. After wasting about an hour on it I gave up.

I think that it's probably about time to really dig into learning perl.
This will let me write any reports I want and integrate them into the
application. I'll probably be able to code ad-hoc reporting functions, too,
and make it work the way we need it to work.

But, I'll take a look at datavision.

Rich

Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President

Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
2404 SW 22nd Street | Troutdale, OR 97060-1247 | U.S.A.
+ 1 503-667-4517 (voice) | + 1 503-667-8863 (fax) | rshepard(at)appl-ecosys(dot)com
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