At 17:27 28/09/99 , Ping Lau wrote:
Unless you want to generate PDF or Postscript files on the fly, you are *not* going to get what you want from a browser-based application, regardless of the server. Neither Zope nor any other Web App can control how your browser will print an HTML page (AFAIK).
There is a PDF package for Perl, but I don't know of any for Python. If there are, then you can relatively easily generate PDF on the fly.
There is an excelent library at:
that comes with a Python interface. It has a pricetag for commercial use however.
I like to first thank all of you for your suggestions. But I still can't quite figure out how PDF can solve my problem. The first problem I am facing is printing reports to pre printed forms loaded in dot matrix printers. The program has to drive the printer to print the info at the right spot on the form. The second problem is how to print barcode(Code39 symbology) on some documents. The barcode encodes the document number. I have found a barcode class written in Java. Is there a way to use Java class within Zope?
With PDF you can position very precisely, and consistently across platforms. With it you can generate a printable document that would fit perfectly into your pre-printed form. You wll have to experiment a bit with the fonts and a dot-matrix printer though, to see what works best. As for barcodes: They are only lines of different widths. If you have the source of that Java class, you could reimplement it in Python, and, if they are part of the documents you are going to print with PDF, integrate that with your generated document. Both PDF libraries mentioned allow you to directly draw lines of a specified width, and import a GIF. -- Martijn Pieters, Web Developer | Antraciet http://www.antraciet.nl | Tel: +31-35-7502100 Fax: +31-35-7502111 | mailto:mj@antraciet.nl http://www.antraciet.nl/~mj | PGP: http://wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xA8A32149 ------------------------------------------