Apache FOP

JamesBowen

JamesBowen

19+ years progress programming and still learning.
Hi All.

Yesterday I was asked if it possible to create customized printable forms. I said YES. Then I quickly stated googling for a working examples. Then I stumbled across Apache FOP project. It sound like what we needed, to be able to create multiple outputted formats i.e. PCL, Images, PDF etc.

So has anybody used 'Apache FOP' to create anything? Also is 'Apache FOP' stable enough to use in a commercial environment?

Normally in the past I have used XPrint, but I am running my application on Linux. SO XPrint is not a solution and not FREE.

Also I have noticed that 'Stylus Studio 2007' has the Apache FOP as an add-on. Which should help with XSLT development.

Many Thanks

James.
 
i wouldn't be so sure about xsl-fo, implementations, future etc. i'd recommend taking a look at ms openxml.

microsofts office new default formats (zip and xml) that have also been backported to office 2000, heck, even open office and a long list of others already support the new format.

but besides that theres a long list of other popular solutions like, pdf and html (that can also be used with office).

actually i'd be happy to talk to you and anyone else interested in kicking off an open source openxml project.

cheers.
 
WOW. Open Office XML may be the way forward. I never thought about creating Spreadsheets for reporting purposes. I was only thinking about creating printable documents. I think you might be right OOXML could be the way forward.

All I need to do is to create a flexible OE ABL driven engine to create these documents.

I still need to do more research into this OOXML, for example on how to print an OOXML file in batch mode from Linux. I would imagine that there is some sort of 'OOXML to Postscript/PCL' command line tool out there which could to the job hopefully.

Obviously Joey you have done some research into this Format. What's needed to 'kicking off' an 'open source openxml' project?

James.

Information Obtained:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
 
maybe use open office to print ooxml (office open xml) files on unix and linux.

there are also open source conversion utils from ooxml to odf (open office rival zip and xml format), html and more coming (haven't heard of an ooxml to pdf tool, yet), it's still somewhat of a new format. so it also makes a nice go between format, what xsl-fo was intended to do.

worst case you could setup an appserver on a windows machine that you can send files to print. kinda of a reporting server.


one very interesting thing about ooxml is that you can map a pure data xml thats contained in the same zip file to the excel or word etc. presentation.

and for example when you update the document the pure data xml also gets updated and if you change the xml file the presentation changes. theres a very nice data, presentation separation.

so you could use word, excel etc. as a wysiwyg tool to design the form or document and then use progress to generate an xml file and insert it into the zip file. very similar to what we used to do with pdf forms and pdfinclude.

i'd be really interested to talk to you about starting an open source project, probably, @oehive.org. i'd also be very happy to work with you. cheers :)
 
Cecil said:
Obviously Joey you have done some research into this Format. What's needed to 'kicking off' an 'open source openxml' project?
Click to expand...

i think, the biggest hurdle would be working with zip files.

worst case would be to use command line tools for unix, linux and windows to extract files to a temp dir, load them from disk to an xml doc object and then back to disk and into the zip file.

preferably we could extract files directly into memory and load them from memory to an xml dom object and back again when saving. which could be very substantial when working with large volumes of data.

either find a c zip library thats cross platform, maybe 7-zip or others have an sdk package ? we, can even use zlib thats also already available with most unix, linux platforms to roll our own. theres an added example in the zlib sources that uses zlib for working with zip files (look up minizip).

and put together several procedures that could be very useful, especially, for working with forms and see from there.
 
I hav started reading the Office Open XML Part 1 - fundamentals.pdf document and joey you are write about having to handle the .docx files as .ZIP files.

In the past I have used the zlib for both windows and linux and it works well but it's not going to be able to do the same thing.

Done a bit of a Google and I think I have found a library to handle zip archive files.

http://www.nih.at/libzip/libzip-fm.html

I am not much of a C programmer, so it will take me some time to implement this particular C library into the ABL.

James.
 
that makes 2 of us :)

a c programmer that also knows his way around unix, linux would definitely make things a hell of alot easier. there must be some guys like that here and @peg that we could ask them questions and maybe they could even join in.

we could even brush up on our c skill. that will probably take some time, at least until we're comfortable and know enough to use it.

there has to be some well known, solid, cross platform zip library. i think, we should have a look at 7-zip and if it has an sdk, but we'll probably need a c programmer to figure out how to use it :)

about using zlib for working with zip files. we could use zlib for the deflate/inflate algorithm and take care of the headers bit in 4gl, that could make for a pretty nice 4gl zip library/util thingy. but the problem i see here is that 4gl memory features are very, very clunky and alot of the time require copying whole segments of memory needlessly that could make for a somewhat unefficient procedure.

worst case, if we feel we're stuck, thing are taking too long etc. we could use a command line tool. of course that would mean that most operations would have an additional overhead going back and forth to disk. which could be a problem with very demanding server side applications.
 
the c zip library looks promising, also license wise. it also builds on zlib.

but we'll definitely need a c guy, we also need to know how to port the library to windows.

maybe Tom, Dr. Thomas, maybe we should try getting in touch with Scott Auge to see if they can help or know someone that would be willing to get involved.

Point is we need a c guy.
 
I've started looking at infoZip. It has an unzip and zip code also dll files and so files.

I tried using the unzip32.dll but every time I run it, Progress crashes into ball of flames. I don't think I am getting the entry point quite correct.
 
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