Hello all,
[This is not strictly a Linux question. I hope it will be of interest to
the list.]
I am developing an enterprise application that will generate various
business documents (invoices, purchase orders, RFQs). The documents
should be printable (and pretty), and also be available in soft copy.
Requirements:
A) Documents should be generated automatically by "merging" dynamic
content with pre-designed document "templates"
B) Designing document templates should be easy (A WYSIWYG approach
is required).
C) Resulting documents should be printable.
D) (Not strictly a must) - being able to send the documents to users
who don't have Microsoft Office.
I am researching the options, and the choice turns out to be difficult
The easiest implementation would be to use Microsoft's InfoPath:
- Pros: The document instances are simple XML files
- Cons: Not cross platform, not open source, young product, doesn't
support requirement D.
An alternative will be to Adobe LiveCycle Forms (where a server
component will merge data and templates to create PDF files).
- Pros: Output documents are widely accessible XML files; the
template definition file use a published specification (Adobe's XDP)
- Cons : A proprietary and probably expensive solution.
I've looked in vain for an open source alternative. I've used Apache FOP
(which generates PDF from XSL-FO files) in the past but (i)it doesn't
support Hebrew (yet); (ii) designing the XSLT/XSL-FO
templates was a little nightmare.
I am also considering using a combination of Mozilla and PDFCreator to
generate PDF from XML/HTML & CSS, but I'm afraid it will require too
much effort to set up. The idea seems to be an old one (
http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-20021111/014912.html,
http://www.planetpdf.com/forumarchive/56738.asp), but I haven't found
reports of implementation.
Any insight will be appreciated.
Youval Bronicki
http://www.tersus.org
http://www.tersus.com
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