Difference between revisions of "Pdf"

Revision as of 10:05, 18 May 2009

http://www.international-presence.com/images/nodes/dataformatter.png

To create a PDF document create a new custom data formatter in your task. Be sure to select 'PDF Document' as the 'Type of document to produce'.

This will then create the template for your PDF instructions.

http://www.international-presence.com/images/docs/pdf/dataformatterscreen.png

As usual if you enter < then the helper will appear with a list of options and permitteed tags for the PDF.

Note it is actually the saving option that tells presence to send these instructions through the PDF formatter to generate the file.

To create a PDF file you need to set the 'Write Output' option to 'Into PDF File'

If you were to select 'To File' then the instructions themselves will be saved as pure text. This is useful if you need to send the instructions to us for debugging purposes, as we can then put the file into a task and run it through the PDF formatter to see what is happening.

http://www.international-presence.com/images/docs/pdf/dataformattersave.png

To create a PDF file we create a series of instructions similar to html. The language is a well structured html with some extra tags taht are specific to the PDF. Each tag should be terminated with an associated closing tag. eg a <page> should eventually include a </page>

At present only basic formatting is supported, so no style sheets or inline formatting is allowed.

Acceptable tags

pdf

Denotes the start of the PDF

document

Describes the document properties and can have the following optional attributes

userpassword - if added then this is needed to open the pdf file

ownerpassword - if added then this is needed to edit the pdf file

allowprinting - whether the document can be printed (true/false)

allowcopy - whether the document can be copied (true/false)

pagenumbers - whether the document will include automatic page numbers (true/false)

landscape - landscape mode (true/false)

header - image that can appear on every page, aligned at the origin(0,0) eg ".\res\images\ipheader.png"

footer - image that can appear on every page, aligned at the bottom eg ".\res\images\ipfooter.png"

pagesize - eg a1 a2 a3 a4 ledger legal letter note 22,33

marginleft - space for left margin

marginright - space for right margin

margintop - space for top margin

marginbottom - space for bottom margin

page

Denotes a new page, so that at any point in the document we can start a new page. This has similar attributes to the document, but whereas the document attributes cover every page, these can be specific to this page only.

landscape - landscape mode (true/false) header - image that can appear on every page, aligned at the origin(0,0) eg ".\res\images\ipheader.png" footer - image that can appear on every page, aligned at the bottom eg ".\res\images\ipfooter.png" pagesize - eg a1 a2 a3 a4 ledger legal letter note 22,33 marginleft - space for left margin marginright - space for right margin margintop - space for top margin marginbottom - space for bottom margin thispageonly - dictates whether these are attributes are to be used for subsequent pages or not.

p

As in html this describes a new paragraph

table

Similar to html, allows you to create a new table and can have the following attributes

width % cellpadding cellspacing border positionabs align bgcolor title caption

As in html to define a new row in the table use <tr> and to define a new cell <td> or <th> which is a header cell and so will be at the top of each page when the table carries over onto the next page.

Cell attributes colspan width % bgcolor align valign - top|middle|bottom|baseline

example

<table  border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="80%">
 <tr>
   <th align="center" colspan="2" bgcolor="blue"><b><font color="white">Results Table</font></b></th>
 </tr>
 <tr>
   <th width="80%">Name</th><th width="20%" align="center" >Standing</th>
 </tr>
 <tr>
   <td><small><font color="black">Graham</font></small></td><td  align="center">1</td>
 </tr>
</table>

font

font-weight:

face

type courier helvetica times

align left center right justify

valign top middle bottom baseline

color

size + -

positionabs

bold

font-size

x-small

small

border-width: border-"+strDirection+"-width: border-"+strDirection+"-style: none medium thin px

u strong small big b br

checkbox input

It is possible to include checkboxes in the document

So <input type="checkbox"></input> would reslt in an unchecked check box 
<input type="checkbox" checked="checked"></input>would result in a checked check box

Miscellaneous

i - switch on itallics

h1 h2 h3 h4 h5 h6 - Put this text in a header, eg <h1>Title</h1>

hr - horizontal line

Lists

ol - ordered list

example

<ol>
<li>First</li> 
<li>Second</li> 
<li>Third</li> 
</ol>

 

ul - unordered list

example

<ul>
<li>Unordered information. </li> 
<li>Ordered information. </li> 
<li>Definitions. </li> 
</ul>

 

pre preformatted text, so between these tags all spaces and tabs will be obeyed, whereas normally several spces or line breaks will be replaced with one space.

img

src - url for image align - alignment on page (left|center|right|justify) scaleabs - scalefit - image tag watermark positionabs

color

Colors can be defined as one of several labels or by hex as in html if you want more control.

For instance green could be specified as either '#00FF00','green'

Presence recognises the following labels as colors:-

black blue cyan darkgray gray green lightgray magenta orange pink red white yellow

example
<font color="#00FF00">I am green text</font>
<td color="blue">This cell will have a blue background</td>'''

Formatting Special Characters

Sometimes you may want to include special characters such as a < or a " As the document is expecting pure well formatted xml it won't let you do this so instead you must escape the characters, for instance putting < \\< will result in a <

< <

> >

" "

& &

\n space

\t space

  space

It's also worth noting that several spaces or returns will get replaced with one space as in html. For behaviour other than that you can use preformatted text.

&nbsp nowrap

Absolute positioning

Sometimes you need to be specific when positioning text (for instance if the document is going to be scanned by an ocr reader, or if you wish to position an address so that it appears in the right position in a windowed evelope, or if you want to place text in the border).

<font positionabs="575,822">O</font>
<table positionabs="0,0"><tr><td>FF</td></tr></table>

In these instances it can be useful to use absolute positioning.

It's worth noting that an A4 page is 595 units across by 842 units down.

Also depending on the table width the table will be pushed left so that it is not hanging off the right hand side of the page. For instance, if the table width was 50% then the positionabs="500,200" would actually be positioned at 298,200.