Storing the generated PDF in ZODB is a straight forward modification. However every change to either the style elements or the content will create a new PDF document and store it in the ZODB. Frequently modified ZpdfDocuments, especially if they are large will cause unneccessary increase of the ZODB. But assuming we add this as an option, where should the PDF doc be added? As a File subobject to the ZpdfDocument? What do you think?
No, I don't think the generated PDF should be stored in the Zpdf Document. It should be stored in a Folder, a class instance, every where it is useful to keep a copy of a this particular file. The idea behind that is to use Zpdf Documents as templates and fill some variable data via a form. Lets take and example. In the insurance field we could create a template for a contract. A person could provide all the necessary data: name, age, profession and check the options the client wants. Then using the Zpdf Document template and the data in the form, we could generate a particular contract for that person. I think we have to be able to retrieve that particular contract on a database. This is just an example, I think the potential of such a tool is huge.
Additional tags can be easily added. The underlying pdflib.py is quite flexible. However if you are thinking about tables then it might be a bit more difficult because of the many parameters that define a table layout. Which tags did you have in mind? I was thinking about more simple tags like <s> and <u>.
Another useful thing would be the abilty to include some arbitrary PDF code in the generated files. For example a logo that could be generated by an authoring application like Illustrator. As I said I do believe PDF+Zope has a huge potential. Printing industry and printed documentation is still a great market (maybe to much conservative). If there is a group working on this field I would be glad to participate. Taking into account that: - I'm not a professional programmer, but I could give some inputs and constructive criticism. - my english is not so good ;) ****************************************************** Oscar Picasso picasso@videotron.ca ******************************************************