On Nov 8, 2007, at 9:26 AM, Philip Iezzi wrote:
> Rick Gigger wrote:
>> Yes, I was aware of those. I don't use them because I implemented my
>> own xml based solutions that has support for tables, page breaking,
>> columns, full rich text support, etc. The basic support in those two
>> engines was never enough. All I really need are the primitives to
>> measure, style and draw text, and of course primitive line and shape
>> drawing operations. I have an abstraction layer that lets me swap
>> back
>> and forth between R&OS and FPDF. My XML parser / DOM style rendering
>> library handles the rest. So I don't think it would be too hard to
>> use
>> Zend_Pdf instead.
>
> Great! Any way of contributing your code to the community?
> I just started to switch from PEAR::File_PDF to Zend_Pdf but I'm
> kind of disappointed that Zend_Pdf is still at the same spot as a
> year ago what concerns improved text functions.
> I played around with Zend_Pdf_Cell presented in issue
http://framework.zend.com/issues/browse/ZF-1254
> but it does not work as expected (e.g. character width is not
> calculated correctly, center alignment is no real center alignment,
> line wrapping does not seem to work at all,...).
> We all would terribly appreciate your piece of code!
I can make the existing code available right now if people want it but
I think some code cleanup and documentation would be needed before it
could be accepted into something like Zend Framework. If anyone wants
to help out with that effort that would be great.
The biggest issue is that the XML format is mostly in my head and only
documented in stuff that I have already done so in order to figure out
how to use it you have to have access to examples or you have to pick
through the code. Also as with most first attempts at something
complicated you finish it up, get it working and finally know the way
it really should have been done in the first place.
So I think the best thing would be to start a clean implementation
now. I can start with basic rich text / wrapping / alignment
features. I will be able to copy most of that over directly from the
existing project because that code is very good and is actually more
of a 4th or 5th generation product. I started off doing simple text
wrapping and alignment on R&OS PDF about 5 years ago and it has
evolved significantly since then. That should be immediately useful
to people and could be used on top of Zend_Pdf without actually
modifying it.
First will come the DOM objects for doing the rendering and shortly
thereafter I will include an extensible XML parser so that creating
documents and testing will be much easier.
Then I can start to add stuff like tables and columns and other layout
features where I will need to do a little more R&D. Eventually if the
Zend people want to start incorporating it into the framework they
will be more than welcome to. I would be willing to help out with the
integration where my time and expertise permits.
The only thing that has really been keeping me from releasing this
stuff in the past (other than time of course) is that I didn't know
anyone who was interested in it. If I could get some feedback from
you guys as I go it would be very helpful to me.
One thing to keep in mind is that my DOM is loosely based on XHTML. I
have drawn most of my tag names from it and am in the middle of a
rudimentary CSS implemention to abstract some of the style information
out of the XML. I have made specific changes though for precision
placement of layout items and for precise control of page breaking and
associated needs. For example I have attributes on table headers to
control whether or not they repeat if the table is broken across
multiple pages. I don't see any reason though that someone couldn't
write a completely different XML layer (FOP?) and use my DOM objects
underneath. That is where all the real work is anyway. The drawback
there is that the naming of the DOM objects will in most instances
correspond with HTML tag names and their functionality will be geared
towards my view of what you need to do proper PDF layouts, which may
be very different from something like FOP. My impression of FOP was
that it might be great but it was a little too ambitions. I say that
with regards to both implementing and using it. By focusing on a
subset of XHTML I was able to get the functionality that I needed
working quickly and it is somewhat intuitive to learn for anyone who
has done even basic HTML work.
Anyway anyone who is interested let me know and I will notify you (or
should I just notify the list) when I have something ready for you to
download.
Thanks,
Rick
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