[Seaside] ODFCanvas?

Stefan Schmiedl s at xss.de
Thu Apr 10 19:01:29 UTC 2008


Greetings,

since there's been some ideas on generating SVG from within a Seaside
application, I start wondering about creating another XML-based
document format: Open Document Format, nee ODF, which is what
OpenOffice.org is using as its native file format.

Has anybody done anything in this direction?

The practical reason for this is that I will need to create some
"editable", at least "printable" and "permanently storable" documents
like orders or requests for quotes. 

One possible way would be to make forms completely editable on screen,
i.e. within Seaside, and then use a tool like CSS2XSLFO
(see http://sourceforge.net/projects/css2xslfo ) which makes use of
(X)HTML input, CSS-based layout info and an external XSL processor
like apache's FOP to produce a PDF file. The advantages are that
editing happens completely within the application, hence the "printed"
document is internally available. 

Another approach would be to generate an ODF-based file, which the
user can download and edit with OOo (which would be a great way to
wean clients from their perceived MS dependency). An "advantage" here
is that I don't have to put as much work into the application (the less
code, the better) and that the user can modify the docs in whatever yet
unthought of way he wants.

What do you think?

Regards,
Stefan


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