Quartam PDF

gimpeltf · Post by **gimpeltf** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 2:15 pm

Is there anyway to print a card from a rev app?
It appears you have to generate the report and send everything piece by piece to various functions. We have, in addition to normal generated text reports, some brackets for sporting events that reside on their own separate cards pre-designed (except for the names and scores that get added on during the event). I would love to be able to print those cards to pdf.

Thanks,
Gimp

Janschenkel · Post by **Janschenkel** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 1:26 pm

Hi Gimp,

Printing cards to a PDF file with a single command is currently not possible using Quartam PDF Library - there's still a lot of preparatory work to be done before this can be tackled: clipping, blending, unicode and styled text with arbitrary fonts, etc.
Then there is the dilemma: do I make the PDF look like the underlying platform, the current lookAndFeel or something else - buttons, checkboxes, radiobuttons, fields,...? Do we want to give extra precision using custom properties, rather than a coarse pixel-based positioning scheme? And which obscure property combinations are lurking to make this even more complicated?
It may take a while before we get there...

Best regards,

Jan Schenkel.

gimpeltf · Post by **gimpeltf** » Fri Nov 23, 2007 10:58 am

Janschenkel wrote:Hi Gimp,

Printing cards to a PDF file with a single command is currently not possible using Quartam PDF Library - there's still a lot of preparatory work to be done before this can be tackled: clipping, blending, unicode and styled text with arbitrary fonts, etc.
Then there is the dilemma: do I make the PDF look like the underlying platform, the current lookAndFeel or something else - buttons, checkboxes, radiobuttons, fields,...? Do we want to give extra precision using custom properties, rather than a coarse pixel-based positioning scheme? And which obscure property combinations are lurking to make this even more complicated?
It may take a while before we get there...

Best regards,

Jan Schenkel.

Thanks, Jan.
I guess I should have asked it this way- is it possible to iterate through all of the fields in some fashion (repeat for each xxx) to accomplish the same thing?

Janschenkel · Post by **Janschenkel** » Fri Nov 23, 2007 4:53 pm

Well, it all depends on the formatting requirements. If you're using the 'standard' font set and styles, it ought to be possible. On the other hand, if you're mixing in custom fonts and special styles, it would be a lot harder.

What exactly do you want to see in the PDF? Do you want to create a new page, and loop over the fields to 'print' their content in the same location as they are on the card?

While a 'generalized' handler may be an elusive creature right now, it could be possible to script a handler that handles your particular situation well enough.

Jan Schenkel.