The problem is that the Velocity Engine pushes its output to a Writer (an argument to the mergeTemplate() method) but iText doesn't include a Writer class that can be used for the purpose - creating a PDF in iText means creating a Document object then calling methods of that class to add "chunk" objects, each of which contains the text along with the font/style settings that apply to that text. So the Writer class I developed was a bridge between the Writer interface that Velocity needs, and the call-based interface that iText uses.
As I mentioned this was a while ago. It's possible that by now the developers of iText have added a Writer interface that would make things simpler, and it's also possible that there's a third-party package to do this. Also bear in mind that iText isn't the only PDF generation package (the page you linked mentions several) and it's possible that one these has a Writer that will work with Velocity. Adrian Tarau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on 10/16/2008 02:54:48 PM: > Why not using iText directly (or some other library) to generate PDF? > Using Velocity to generate PDF is not a good way to go... > > http://java-source.net/open-source/pdf-libraries > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > The way I did this was to have my Velocity templates generate output text > > that was sent to a PDFWriter class that I wrote. This class detected > > special markers in the input stream that indicated new paragraphs, > > bold/underline/italic sections, font changes, images etc., and made calls > > to iText to create the "chunks" that iText uses and add them to the PDF > > output document on the fly. It could handle basic stuff (paragraph styles, > > multiple fonts, tables, background colours and images, embedded images) and > > was adequate for what I needed it for. It couldn't handle more advanced > > stuff like floating sidebars, but that wasn't something I needed. > > > > That was a while ago. If I was going to do the same thing again I'd have > > the Velocity templates produce XML and base the Writer on Commons-Digester. > > > > It's always possible that there is a direct PDF Writer class out there > > already that accepts input text in some handy form like XML - I just did a > > quick Google and didn't find anything, but it's such an obvious thing I'd > > be surprised if there isn't *something*. > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
