Re: Report generation

On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Culley Harrelson wrote:

> pdflib is wonderful but...
>
> The learning curve is high.  For instance:  the coordinate system is
> basically *upside down* starting from the bottom left hand corner of the
> page.  The formatting is fairly low level too-- you have to take in to
> consideration character spacing, line spacing, font metrics.... You can
> even draw paths but i have yet to attempt this (and I don't think I want
> to).

Culley,

  I use the Gri plotting language for scientific plots and that works the
same way on the page layout. Takes a while to get used to (0,0) on the
bottom, left rather than the upper, left.

  But, my output needs are simple. Printing checks and accounting reports
does not need the beauty of PDF. LaTeX or other typesetting systems. Plain,
ol' Courier properly and nicely formatted on the page does for these, too.

> For simplicity this doesn't compare to something like crystal reports but
> if you have the time you could make some really nice pdf reports with
> pdflib.  For pdf generation with php fpdf is also worth noting:

  While I'd like some ad-hoc reporting capability, most of these reports are
coded once and run over and over again. Receivable aging reports, job cost
reports and so on. The accountants (and I) want to see the same reports both
on fixed intervals and as needed. Nothing really fancy.

Thanks,

Rich

Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President

                       Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
            2404 SW 22nd Street | Troutdale, OR 97060-1247 | U.S.A.
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