One question you have to consider is: Do you need a "document" which your user can edit or do you need a "page-layout" which can be viewed and printed, but not edited.
If you generate a MSWord document, HMTL, or RTF, then your user can for example insert or delete paragraphs, table-rows etc. The user himself and his Word processort are responsible for having a nice page-layout (page-breaks etc) then. If he doesn't like the page breaks, he could insert a manual page-break where he likes. On the other hand, if you generate PDF or PostScript, the user can not modify the document as described above. He can only view or print it, but this is very easy. LaTeX is somewhere in the middle. A scientist or power-user may have LaTeX installed and could modify the generated LaTeX source if he needs, then generate PDF or PostScript from the modified source. A normal user probably has not installed LaTeX, he can only view and print the generated PDF vith Acrobat Reader. So it could be a good choice if you offer all three versions for download (LaTex source, PDF, PostScript) (your application still only needs to generate the LaTeX source). Henning > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- > Von: Bob Kline [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Gesendet am: Freitag, 18. Oktober 2002 13:34 > An: Kári Harđarson > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Betreff: Re: Formatting reports with Python > > On Fri, 18 Oct 2002, Kári Harđarson wrote: > > > Hello all, > > > > I would like to get some opinionated opinions from you > > on a design decision I have to make. > > > > The system we write and sell is written in Python, and now we need > > reports on paper. Until now, all reports have been made available > > from a website, but users complain that they don't look good enough > > and have unnecessary page feeds. > > We had a similar requirement for a system I'm working on. We settled on > generating LaTeX from our Python reporting scripts. That gives us > PostScript or PDF, from which we get beautifully printed reports. > Easier than generating RTF (one of the options we also considered) and > more portable. We can send the output directly to a PostScript aware > printer (as opposed to relying on having to drive a proprietary engine > to print the RTF). > > -- > Bob Kline > mailto:bkline@;rksystems.com > http://www.rksystems.com > > _______________________________________________ > ActivePython mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To unsubscribe: http://listserv.ActiveState.com/mailman/mysubs > Other options: http://listserv.ActiveState.com/mailman/listinfo/ActivePython _______________________________________________ ActivePython mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://listserv.ActiveState.com/mailman/mysubs Other options: http://listserv.ActiveState.com/mailman/listinfo/ActivePython
