[Seaside] ODFCanvas?

[Holger Kleinsorgen]

Stefan Schmiedl wrote:
> 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?

not personally, but where I work we've tried various approaches for 
creating printable documents.

----
HTML -> TeX -> PDF
----
good:
+ high-quality TeX output

bad:
- HTML -> TeX is not loss-free, so it's hard to control the 	appearance 
of the output

----
Report -> FOP -> PDF
----
good:
+ it actually generates PDF

bad:
- haven't found a FOP processor that handles tables correctly
(e.g. text within cells crosses the cell boundaries).
Maby this has changed in the meantime.
- generally, not loss-free
- Apache FOP requires JRE. Other FOP processors in C are way behind 
Apache FOP in terms of quality.

----
Report -> PDF
----

good:
+ can control every bit of the generated PDF

bad:
- need to control every bit of the generated PDF.
- converting HTML -> PDF is as easy as writing a HTML renderer *cough*

----
Graph -> SXD
----

good:
+ graph can be translated into a document more or less loss-free.

bad:
- user needs OpenOffice. might be ok in a intranet environment, 
difficult in environments where people cannot or don't want to install 
OpenOffice or an ODF converter/plugin for their favorite tool.