[Pharo-project] Report generation? (I need an update)
Hi, I have a client who wants a desktop app (yes, I'm experimenting with transforming pharo into something a non-smalltalker user can use), and I need to generate some reports. I know, I know... this question raises time to time, but I need an updated answer. Seaside page lists some possibilities (with PDF generators), but, for instance, SPDF points to a squeakmap location to nowhere, and the others looks... well, not so lightweight (maybe I will finish using libharu, looks like the only living project on squeaksource). So... my question: what do you use to generate reports to clients? if pdf generation... which strategy? Thanks, Esteban
Hello,
So... my question: what do you use to generate reports to clients? if pdf generation... which strategy?
We've been using http://www.princexml.com/ for some time now. We generate html with seaside, write it to a file with the CSS and run prince on it. This may be a bit strange, but this tool really uses CSS nicely. We tried a few routes; what was difficult was to get something that looks good in the browser and then looks good in a PDF document as well, with minimal effort. The + is that when developing, you can work with the browser (and write tests with SeasideTesting) and then the last step is to get pages, headers and footers to look good in the PDF. HTH Otto
Christian Haider said that he wanted to open source its pdf framework. Stef
Hi, I have a client who wants a desktop app (yes, I'm experimenting with transforming pharo into something a non-smalltalker user can use), and I need to generate some reports. I know, I know... this question raises time to time, but I need an updated answer. Seaside page lists some possibilities (with PDF generators), but, for instance, SPDF points to a squeakmap location to nowhere, and the others looks... well, not so lightweight (maybe I will finish using libharu, looks like the only living project on squeaksource).
So... my question: what do you use to generate reports to clients? if pdf generation... which strategy?
Thanks, Esteban
On 08 Jun 2011, at 17:37, Esteban Lorenzano wrote:
So... my question: what do you use to generate reports to clients? if pdf generation... which strategy?
We use Jasper reports: www.jasperforge.org It's a feature-rich library for generation of any report to about any format you can think of, and it's open source. The downside is: it is a Java library but we use http communication between our Seaside app and the jasper application. In the future, I hope to get my own Javaconnect library (working in Visualworks) rolling completely in Pharo to have native communication from Pharo to Java. In the meantime, you might try JNIPort since that one has Pharo version already. We can try to develop everything in Smalltalk but we will fail to keep up. Johan
Most of my "reports" these days are graphs. Tab-delimited text -> R frequently gets the job done for publication quality work. I have various levels of control over gnuplot and PLplot; the latter being preferred with large numbers of points. I just did a rush job of knitting clashing data streams that ended with a file being imported into LibreOffice Calc and saved to .xls. A couple of years ago, I used a PDF printer driver with Dolphin to create some files I needed; that whole thing has since been folded into Seaside (great!) and then completely destroyed by what we will call politics - don't ask - nothing wrong with the science or the technology though. I have been doing a lot of writing lately. To quote a professional writer whose work I followed for a long time, "I enjoy having written". I would be going nuts were it not for LaTeX. Generating LaTeX source would be easy. Using OSProcess to run pdf2latex should be simple (I think). Formatting the output would be the most challenging part. For examples of what can be done, have a look here: http://www.cs.duke.edu/brd/NIH/tips/ and perhaps at the res.cls style. I agree that we should not try to do everything in Smalltalk, or more to the point, that we should not limit ourselves to what we have time to write. Dolphin's COM integration saved me a couple of times. Pharo should have something similar, probably centered on connectivity with Java (as a cross-platform answer to COM Automation??). Bill ________________________________________ From: pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr [pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr] On Behalf Of Johan Brichau [johan@inceptive.be] Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 1:08 PM To: Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Report generation? (I need an update) On 08 Jun 2011, at 17:37, Esteban Lorenzano wrote:
So... my question: what do you use to generate reports to clients? if pdf generation... which strategy?
We use Jasper reports: www.jasperforge.org It's a feature-rich library for generation of any report to about any format you can think of, and it's open source. The downside is: it is a Java library but we use http communication between our Seaside app and the jasper application. In the future, I hope to get my own Javaconnect library (working in Visualworks) rolling completely in Pharo to have native communication from Pharo to Java. In the meantime, you might try JNIPort since that one has Pharo version already. We can try to develop everything in Smalltalk but we will fail to keep up. Johan
Le 08/06/2011 17:37, Esteban Lorenzano a écrit :
Hi, Hi, So... my question: what do you use to generate reports to clients? if pdf generation... which strategy?
In my job we use OpenOffice as a service to perform document format conversion. We have defined a document template (an ODT document) with which an intermediate document is built thanks to the OpenOffice API then the intermediate document is sent to the OpenOffice service to perform the format conversion. The downside of this solution is that the OpenOffice API is either in Java or in C++. Here some refs: - the OpenOffice API: http://api.openoffice.org/ - a Java library that wraps the OpenOffice API to do format conversion: http://www.artofsolving.com/opensource/jodconverter - a toolkit to build OpenDocument documents (in Java): http://simple.odftoolkit.org/ I think there is a lot of work to realize a high-level (and more simple) API in Smalltalk/Pharo to build OpenDocument documents and to communicate to an OpenOffice service with UNO. Mig
For real projects (and simple reports) I used to generate html and print and so with a browser, but I would like and advanced PDF generator for some more complex reportes. I should search on my backups and I'm almost sure I've a copy of SPDF but I not used because seems that the license is restrictive. Germán. 2011/6/8 Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm@gmail.com>:
Hi, I have a client who wants a desktop app (yes, I'm experimenting with transforming pharo into something a non-smalltalker user can use), and I need to generate some reports. I know, I know... this question raises time to time, but I need an updated answer. Seaside page lists some possibilities (with PDF generators), but, for instance, SPDF points to a squeakmap location to nowhere, and the others looks... well, not so lightweight (maybe I will finish using libharu, looks like the only living project on squeaksource).
So... my question: what do you use to generate reports to clients? if pdf generation... which strategy?
Thanks, Esteban
-- ================================================= Germán S. Arduino <gsa @ arsol.net>  Twitter: garduino Arduino Software & Web Hosting  http://www.arduinosoftware.com PasswordsPro http://www.passwordspro.com =================================================
participants (7)
-
Esteban Lorenzano -
Germán Arduino -
Johan Brichau -
Miguel Moquillon -
Otto Behrens -
Schwab,Wilhelm K -
Stéphane Ducasse