--- william humphrey <shoreag...@gmail.com> wrote: > I've been looking at Quartam reports and am now > interested in the Quartam > PDF library but haven't tried it yet. Can you tell > me if I can use it with > existing formated cards that have already been > designed for printing with > RunRev standard commands? The reason I ask is that > on a Mac we can just > choose "save as PDF" but I understand that when my > program is used on > Window's that won't be an option. I also would like > the PDF to be > automatically generated and then attached to an > email. Reading on the > Quartam site about the PDF library it looks like it > is mainly for generating > PDF's with complex lines of code instead of just > using what RunRev already > does for you when you build your report on a RunRev > card with carefully > placed fields etc. > So what I'm looking for is a command that just sends > to a PDF in both > windows and mac instead of to the printer. >
Hi William, Thank you for checking out the Quartam products - both the Reports package and the PDF library. Quartam PDF Library doesn't have a magic command that turns cards or stacks into PDF files. While it's stable and good at what it does, it is limited in terms of unicode and font support; plus, you would need clipping and blending; and a way to simulate the text styles that Rev has, which can be tricky as PDF only cares about and knows plain, bold and italic (you even have to simulate underline in code) Though I have been working on these items, even with all the building blocks in place, there is still an important question to be answered: how do we render everything in a cross-platform way? Not only is there a myriad of properties and combinations of properties to keep in mind, the items may also look different on each operating system. All platforms have their own quirks when painting a field border or any of the native controls. Wthout a way of hooking directly into the Rev graphics subsystem, I would have to take care of all this rendering myself. And then when Microsoft or Apple decide to restyle the native controls, we're back to square one. This doesn't mean it can't be done, but it means it's not as straightforward as it may appear to be. For now, if the user doesn't need the ability to select any of the text, you can just export a snapshot of your card to a temporary image file and draw that image into the PDF file. Best regards, Jan Schenkel. Quartam Reports & PDF Library for Revolution <http://www.quartam.com> ===== "As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time." (La Rochefoucauld) _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
