Re: [iText-questions] Guidance Requested - Generating multipage output with header/footer and pg 1 layout
Daniel Cane wrote:
On to a new challenge -- I'd like to have lists as part of one of the
columnTexts, but have learned that that's unsupported (and I even think I
understand why).
People who have been following this list for a long time,
know that I can react very frustrated at times.
Newbies often don't understand why I react that way.
This is a nice opportunity to explain the origin of this frustration.
You have learned that lists are unsupported in ColumnText.
Where have you learned this?
Who is spreading this kind of desinformation?
Why are you saying this.
In attachment, you can find a very simple example that proves
the opposite of what you've learned.
And more importantly: what is wrong with the documentation???
What is wrong with the second edition of the book that still causes
misconceptions like this? There are still a couple of months left to
find a remedy before the book goes to print.
--
This answer is provided by 1T3XT BVBA
http://www.1t3xt.com/ - http://www.1t3xt.info
column_list.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import com.itextpdf.text.Document;
import com.itextpdf.text.DocumentException;
import com.itextpdf.text.List;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.ColumnText;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfWriter;
public class ColumnList {
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException,
DocumentException {
Document document = new Document();
// step 2
PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new
FileOutputStream(column_list.pdf));
// step 3
document.open();
// step 4
ColumnText ct = new ColumnText(writer.getDirectContent());
List list = new List(List.ORDERED);
list.add(item 1);
list.add(item 2);
list.add(item 3);
ct.addElement(list);
ct.setSimpleColumn(36, 36, 559, 806);
ct.go();
// step 5
document.close();
}
}
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Re: [iText-questions] Guidance Requested - Generating multipage output with header/footer and pg 1 layout
Where have you learned this? Who is spreading this kind of desinformation? Why are you saying this. In attachment, you can find a very simple example that proves the opposite of what you've learned. And more importantly: what is wrong with the documentation??? What is wrong with the second edition of the book that still causes misconceptions like this? There are still a couple of months left to find a remedy before the book goes to print. Along the lines of your comments, I would guess the problem would be someone has to read it. Now, before you dismiss this as a pointless joke, I would just consider it as Stating the obvious as this often is a route to great discovery ( you needn't pat me on the back at this point, I am doing so now). Stating another obvious, we have computers. With appropriately formetted electronic publications, we have tools like grep to help us find what we need with efficient use of resources. However, often there is a problem with vocabulary and document structure for the beginner wishing to become familiar with a topic. Keywords don't help if you don't know what they are, if there is not document structure common word context is hard to find. So, you can create neologisms to make searching easier or in the electronic docs create structure. fwiw. While Leonard and others keep pointing out that PDF has structural capabilities, everytime someone asks here a question that lends itself to use of these facilities, almost unanimuous opinion is, sure its possible but it is too complicated or hard and no one would use it, I can grep javadocs and have some idea of context since the rendered html is fairly uniform if not intended to be structured. I can build my own indexes and remove common words, reducing the time to learn jargon etc. _ The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multiaccountocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_4 -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://www.itextpdf.com/book/ Check the site with examples before you ask questions: http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/
Re: [iText-questions] Guidance Requested - Generating multipage output with header/footer and pg 1 layout
Mike Marchywka wrote: Along the lines of your comments, I would guess the problem would be someone has to read it. Now, before you dismiss this as a pointless joke, I would just consider it as Stating the obvious as this often is a route to great discovery ( you needn't pat me on the back at this point, I am doing so now). Pat on your back anyway. I think one of the problems is indeed that people start coding before reading. Everybody thinks it's obvious that one should have a driver's license before driving a car, but maybe there should be something like a driver's license before using a tool like iText ;-) Stating another obvious, we have computers. With appropriately formetted electronic publications, we have tools like grep to help us find what we need with efficient use of resources. However, often there is a problem with vocabulary and document structure for the beginner wishing to become familiar with a topic. That's true. I think the problem of the OP is that he isn't familiar with the concepts text mode vs composite mode in ColumnText. Keywords don't help if you don't know what they are, if there is not document structure common word context is hard to find. So, you can create neologisms to make searching easier or in the electronic docs create structure. fwiw. While Leonard and others keep pointing out that PDF has structural capabilities, everytime someone asks here a question that lends itself to use of these facilities, almost unanimuous opinion is, sure its possible but it is too complicated or hard and no one would use it, Note that there are examples in chapter 15 of the book, explaining how to convert an ordinary PDF to plain text, and how to convert a tagged PDF to an XML file. That could be useful if you want to retrieve the content of a PDF document. -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://www.itextpdf.com/book/ Check the site with examples before you ask questions: http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/
Re: [iText-questions] Guidance Requested - Generating multipage output with header/footer and pg 1 layout
1T3XT info info at 1t3xt.info writes: That's true. I think the problem of the OP is that he isn't familiar with the concepts text mode vs composite mode in ColumnText. My friend - iText is truly amazing, and I support you! (I have in fact purchased the MEAP version and did search it prior to posting). Sometimes google is not our friend. When I searched the book, the examples I found had lists added to the document, but I did not see one added to a ColumnText. When my initial attempt to simply addText(paragraphContainingStuffIncludingLists) failed I googled for the failure and found a posting - possibly outdated - which said, you can't do that. So, I posted here. Forgive my n00biness - I did not mean to upset you by any means! I'm reading up on Composite Mode now and it appears to be the answer. He doesn't know how to use the 3 seashells! - Me in an obscure reference to Demolition Man Thank you ALL for creating a community for support. -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://www.itextpdf.com/book/ Check the site with examples before you ask questions: http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/
Re: [iText-questions] Guidance Requested - Generating multipage output with header/footer and pg 1 layout
Daniel Cane wrote: He doesn't know how to use the 3 seashells! - Me in an obscure reference to Demolition Man That would be a great quote for the book ;-) Thanks for understanding. -- This answer is provided by 1T3XT BVBA http://www.1t3xt.com/ - http://www.1t3xt.info -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://www.itextpdf.com/book/ Check the site with examples before you ask questions: http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/
Re: [iText-questions] Guidance Requested - Generating multipage output with header/footer and pg 1 layout
1T3XT info info at 1t3xt.info writes:
I would work with ColumnText.
For the first page, I would add the first page of the template
without the fields as the background of my new document.
I would retrieve the positions of the fixed items, and put them
on the page using ColumnText.
Then I would create a ColumnText object for the unstructured content;
I would add the unstructured content using paragraphs, tables,...
I would also call go() on a regular basis. Whenever a new page is
needed, I would add a new page with the second page of the template
as background.
Brilliant,
I ended up using a PdfPageEventHelper to set the template to either first page,
or follow-up page types and then put my content into 2 columnText blocks (for
left and right sides of the page) - since either could be 1 page long..
Then I wrote a little block of code to continue to add pages so long as either
columnText had content still to write out:
do
{
int iLeftColHasMore = ct.go();
int iRightColHasMore = ctRight.go();
ct.setSimpleColumn(35.2716f, 105.56f, 137.131f, 704.298f, 12.0f,
Element.ALIGN_LEFT);
ctRight.setSimpleColumn(154.747f, 65.5776f, 577.704f, 703.88f, 12.0f,
Element.ALIGN_LEFT);
if (ColumnText.hasMoreText(iLeftColHasMore) ||
ColumnText.hasMoreText(iRightColHasMore))
{
document.newPage();
Phrase pageNumTitle = new Phrase();
pageNumTitle.add(new Chunk(Page + iPageNumber,
PDFNoteUtil.NOTETYPE));
setPageHeader(writer, document, pageNumTitle,
veVisit.getPatient());
iPageNumber++;
}
}
while (ColumnText.hasMoreText(ct.go()) || ColumnText.hasMoreText(ctRight.go()));
Works GREAT! Thanks for all of your help.
On to a new challenge -- I'd like to have lists as part of one of the
columnTexts, but have learned that that's unsupported (and I even think I
understand why). But I can't seem to hack my way around it. I need the
columnText magic to span pages, but I'd like to take advantage of lists (and
images, etc)...
I can't seem to use any indentation voodoo on the inner paragraphs as well (they
all seem to be ignored when nested inside of CT?) I was thinking of trying to
use a negative indent to fake it, but can't make that work.
So - how does one have a multipage spanning CT (or the like) and get to use/fake
numbered lists?
Thanks again.
Dan
--
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Re: [iText-questions] Guidance Requested - Generating multipage output with header/footer and pg 1 layout
Hello Daniel, On Apr 28, 2010, at 1:32 AM, Daniel Cane wrote: Interesting - could you show me how you define your spot function? The idea of simply assembling a 'top' spot, 'left' spot and 'right' spot is appealing, but I'm a little lost on how to implement it. Are spots = paragraphs or templates or what? Also, how would this work with a different header / footer on all pages after the first page? I very much appreciate your suggestion! The Spot is a class or better yet an enum type which has a corresponding stored configuration in your preferred configuration format e.g. xml, properties, txt etc. The client code can refer to Spots by the appropriate enum instance e.g. spot.properties: TOP_LEFT=23,0,repeat TOP_RIGHT=250,0,repeat etc the client code would look like this: IBuilder builder = ... builder.addPdfTemplate(Spot.TOP_LEFT,load(Parts.HEADER)); note that client code does not exactly know what TOP_LEFT details are ... The Spot type could also have some sort of small gap constant value maybe also externalized in configuration which would support functions like this: Spot.TOP_LEFT.right().right() so you would have finer control on the coordinate positions but again I would avoid any algorithm that moves things around because: - complexity - possible lose of predictability of the visual output From all the ideas I thought of for implementing the layout, this was the simplest one ... HTH, Best regards, Giovanni -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://www.itextpdf.com/book/ Check the site with examples before you ask questions: http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/
Re: [iText-questions] Guidance Requested - Generating multipage output with header/footer and pg 1 layout
Daniel Cane wrote: The first page is somewhat more structured than the subsequent pages as it has the patient history, etc. The secondary pages will have any overflow from the first page and include images, etc. I would like all of the secondary pages to have a header, footer, and page number. My first approach was attempting to create the page from scratch using chunks, paragraphs, etc. This seems to give me a ton of control, but I find myself tinkering (a ton) to get the layout to work. Correct. Using the chunks and paragraphs are ideal to create the flow of content (from your database), but not for the first page where you probably have fixed items such as patient name, birth date,... My second approach was to use the PdfStamper with form fields I drew in Acrobat. The merge of the structured fields worked great, but I'm stuck with the unstructured portion of the output getting cut off (since my template is only the first page). I would create a two page PDF with Acrobat. I would use the first page of this template for the first page of the new document, and the second page for all subsequent pages. I would use fields to define small rectangles for the fixed items, and a large rectangle for the unstructured content. Question - how can I / can I have a page 1 template, and then a page 2+ I would work with ColumnText. For the first page, I would add the first page of the template without the fields as the background of my new document. I would retrieve the positions of the fixed items, and put them on the page using ColumnText. Then I would create a ColumnText object for the unstructured content; I would add the unstructured content using paragraphs, tables,... I would also call go() on a regular basis. Whenever a new page is needed, I would add a new page with the second page of the template as background. -- This answer is provided by 1T3XT BVBA http://www.1t3xt.com/ - http://www.1t3xt.info -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://www.itextpdf.com/book/ Check the site with examples before you ask questions: http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/
Re: [iText-questions] Guidance Requested - Generating multipage output with header/footer and pg 1 layout
I use page events and the decorator pattern for templates and page numbering. I use template pdf:s for templates. A template pdf contains one or two pages with the template (depending on if I have the same or different tempaltes for page one and for subsequent pages). If I have a separate template for page one I add it manually. The decorators are typically added as listeners to the onPageEnd and onClose events. The code has the following structure: Create Document object and open it. Load and add the first page template. Add decorators (template, page numbering, test text). Add pdf body (whatever you want to include in the pdf). Close Document. /Klas -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://www.itextpdf.com/book/ Check the site with examples before you ask questions: http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/
Re: [iText-questions] Guidance Requested - Generating multipage output with header/footer and pg 1 layout
Hello, Klas Lindbäck wrote: I use page events and the decorator pattern for templates and page numbering. I use template pdf:s for templates. A template pdf contains one or two pages with the template (depending on if I have the same or different [snip] Nice. I have also thought about using Composite, having a top component interface IPdfElement to build compositions from and at many levels e.g. header could be a composite aggregating an Image on the left and PdfText in the center-right, and as you mention also have IPdfElement decorators. This IMO would provide an all-round design for building layouts too. The layout management would be simplified e.g place IPdfElement in relative coordinate position rather than absolute positions so the absolute positions would get resolved automatically from the containing component taking some predefined spacing/padding into account. As I see it, the goal is basically to abstract from low level framework details as much as possible specially in setups like mine where the client code are business rules. I really need the simplest possible façade to build PDF documents. Best regards, Giovanni == Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.credit-suisse.com/legal/en/disclaimer_email_ib.html == -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://www.itextpdf.com/book/ Check the site with examples before you ask questions: http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/
Re: [iText-questions] Guidance Requested - Generating multipage output with header/footer and pg 1 layout
Hello Daniel, Please note that I am a relatively newbie with iText. I have been recently faced with similar questions as yours and this is my attempted solution ... perhaps it will give you some ideas. On Apr 27, 2010, at 9:58 PM, Daniel Cane wrote: My first approach was attempting to create the page from scratch using chunks, paragraphs, etc. This seems to give me a ton of control, but I find myself tinkering (a ton) to get the layout to work. I define templates as simple as a list of coordinate points or hot spots or however you want to call them. These points are uniquely keyed by labels e.g. TOP_LEFT and they also have a recurrence flag i.e. repeat for all pages. So they look like Spot(x,y,TOP_LEFT,repeat). These coordinate tuples are defined manually once so that the visual appealingness is well known in advance and not computed on the fly by some algorithm where you could lose predictability of the visual output. Now that's all :) I then use the Builder Design pattern which is one of the few interfaces to client code with methods similar to e.g. IBuilder#addPdfPart(Spot,IPdfPart) IBuilder#addTable(Spot,ITable) IBuilder#build() my Layout Manager does not shift on the x axis but only on the y-axis and breaks onto new pages automatically. It also checks or will for overlapping. This solution resolves the problem of having to deal with the combinatorial explosion of PDF templates to maintain ... you keep only metadata list of points as template. HTH, Best regards, Giovanni -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://www.itextpdf.com/book/ Check the site with examples before you ask questions: http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/
