RE: [Zope] Zope & OpenOffice
Why not consider ReportLab, a Python library for doing just this kind of thing? I have not used it, but if I understand correctly, tt has a chart-description XML language, and it can output PDF or (via PIL) a JPG... http://www.reportlab.com Sean -----Original Message----- From: Dirk Datzert [mailto:Dirk.Datzert@rasselstein-hoesch.de] Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 10:20 AM To: zope@zope.org Subject: [Zope] Zope & OpenOffice Hi, I'm looking around for Python-Code or Zope-Product which uses OpenOffice as a generator for Charts. The idea is to generate XML-OpenOffice-Code via Zope, transfer the dynamic document into OpenOffice and save it as HTML with JPGs. The JPGs should then be served via Zope as a chart-picture. Or the OpenOffice document could be converted into a MSOffice Document and downloaded via Zope. Regards, Dirk _______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )
Hi! It's amazing to see all these suggestions. But I think that Dirk's approach would in fact be the most elegant solution. That is, if somebody provides a useable Python API to the OpenOffice XML filters. Yes, you CAN do nice charts with GDChart, and ReportLab is another good option. But have you ever tried to take an automatically generated (GIF or JPG) chart from the web and manipulate it to fit your specific needs (colour, size, etc.)? With OpenOffice, this could all be a really easy: For displaying the chart on the web site, you'll render it to GIF, PNG, or JPG. But people can also download the (auto-generated) OpenOffice file and use OpenOffice to change colors, switch from 3D pie charts to bar charts, etc.! Another cool thing: You could create the template file for the chart using OpenOffice, and then add some DTML (or TAL) variables to the code in Zope. The whole thing also works with generating spreadsheet tables and word processor files, but with the charts example it is most impressing. The only tool that comes near to that would be ReportLab, because it uses an XML description syntax. But there is no editor for that (at least no non-commercial one), so it is a one-way thing. With KDE's KOffice suite, the same things would be possible, but it is not available for Windows, and it is still less advanced. I have mentioned this a couple of times before: Guys, look at combining OpenOffice (and/or KDE/KOffice) with Zope, and what you'll get is a dream team: Full WYSIWYG editing clients for rich documents, export/import filters (server-side) for most important file formats, etc. The problem is: Who is going to provide the bindings for the OpenOffice libraries? That would be the most important step to go. Joachim ----- Original Message ----- From: <sean.upton@uniontrib.com> To: <Dirk.Datzert@rasselstein-hoesch.de>; <zope@zope.org> Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 10:36 PM Subject: RE: [Zope] Zope & OpenOffice
Why not consider ReportLab, a Python library for doing just this kind of thing? I have not used it, but if I understand correctly, tt has a chart-description XML language, and it can output PDF or (via PIL) a JPG... http://www.reportlab.com
Sean
-----Original Message----- From: Dirk Datzert [mailto:Dirk.Datzert@rasselstein-hoesch.de] Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 10:20 AM To: zope@zope.org Subject: [Zope] Zope & OpenOffice
Hi,
I'm looking around for Python-Code or Zope-Product which uses OpenOffice as a generator for Charts.
The idea is to generate XML-OpenOffice-Code via Zope, transfer the dynamic document into OpenOffice and save it as HTML with JPGs. The JPGs should then be served via Zope as a chart-picture.
Or the OpenOffice document could be converted into a MSOffice Document and downloaded via Zope.
Regards, Dirk
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_______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )
At 01:29 AM 1/26/2002 +0100, Joachim Werner wrote:
The problem is: Who is going to provide the bindings for the OpenOffice libraries? That would be the most important step to go.
My guess would be that the bindings will be too slow for online handeling. Regards, Stephan -- Stephan Richter CBU - Physics and Chemistry Student Web2k - Web Design/Development & Technical Project Management
-> My guess would be that the bindings will be too slow for online handeling. I think OpenOffice bindings are a great idea. As far as performance... well, the first law of performance testing is that programmers are notorious for making bad guesses about performance :) --Derek
Hi! Why should they? What could be the performance difference to using other (IMO less-optimized) products like wvWare? OpenOffice works as a server that can be called via a documented protocol. So there wouldn't be any startup times. And the code itself is C++, so it should be rather fast. BTW, Sun is doing exactly this for its Java-based Webtop stuff. They use OpenOffice/StarOffice as a backend library and call it from the Java frontend code. So actually we would not be abusing OpenOffice, but use it as its developers are suggesting. Of course a server with OpenOffice running would need a bit more power and memory than without. But you have to pay a price for new features. And of course you could cache all files, so a Word download file would only be recreated after having changed the underlying XML doc, not for every sinlge download. I am sure that this recreation process (and also the cataloging, which could be even more painful) could be done in a separate thread to make sure that it doesn't block file serving. In general, I'd do a prototype first and test it for performance later. Joachim ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephan Richter" <srichter@cbu.edu> To: "Joachim Werner" <joe@iuveno-net.de>; <sean.upton@uniontrib.com>; <Dirk.Datzert@rasselstein-hoesch.de>; <zope@zope.org> Cc: "Paul Everitt" <paul@zope.com> Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 1:58 AM Subject: Re: [Zope] Zope & OpenOffice
At 01:29 AM 1/26/2002 +0100, Joachim Werner wrote:
The problem is: Who is going to provide the bindings for the OpenOffice libraries? That would be the most important step to go.
My guess would be that the bindings will be too slow for online handeling.
Regards, Stephan
-- Stephan Richter CBU - Physics and Chemistry Student Web2k - Web Design/Development & Technical Project Management
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Hi! I think the ZipFolder product would be a first nice step for a new OpenOfficeDocument product. As OpenOffice documents are ZIP-files ZipFolder would be a propper way to store OpenOffice documents in a way single xml-components would be editable and managed thru zope. The XML components could be DTML-Documents instead of type File. Zopes flexible caching mechnism should be used, so the traffic to OpenOffice remote server could be reduced. A way to download the complete OpenOffice document should be integrated into ZipFolder. Any other ideas ? Regards, Dirk
participants (5)
-
Derek Simkowiak -
Dirk Datzert -
Joachim Werner -
sean.upton＠uniontrib.com -
Stephan Richter