The best PDF generation I have found is using Chrome headless via Puppeteer
(https://developers.google.com/web/tools/puppeteer). For most reports, I
generate a single source document in HTML that works with web browsers, Excel,
and PDF.
Since you are already generating Excel documents, perhaps Excel -> HTML ->
Puppeteer/PDF might be an option. I guess it all depends on Excel automation
options. I have not done much on that end other than asking Excel to open HTML
documents.
Side note: 4D 18 includes some nice Zip commands. If you are willing to slog
through a lot of details, 4D 18 can create Excel files using the XML and Zip
commands without any plugins.
John DeSoi, Ph.D.
> On Feb 21, 2020, at 4:18 PM, rooftop99--- via 4D_Tech <4d_tech@lists.4d.com>
> wrote:
>
> From within 4D, programmatically I need to grab an existing Excel document
> and print it to PDF… (or “magically" transform it to PDF, if that option is
> available.)
>
> We create Excel documents from 4D using Rob Laveaux’s powerful XL Plugin. We
> print PDFs in 4D using the plugin: 4D PDF Printer. We now want to
> automatically create both Excel and PDFs of the same data using the same
> format. Rather than building two processes (forms, methods, etc) to handle
> each flavor of a report, I would like to create and save the Excel doc first
> then use that doc to create a PDF…. Anyone doing this or have ideas on how
> this could be done?
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