Discussion:
Zend_Pdf document abstraction model
Alexander Veremyev
2007-07-23 20:36:44 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

I would like to open discussion concerning Zend_Pdf document abstraction
model.


There were a lot of requests for tables, text blocks, headers, footnotes
and other text decoration functionality in ZF mailing lists.

I am sure we should produce some abstract document model to get
consistent rich text drawing API.
Such model should also define internal document representation and
supported or potential features.


I see XSL-FO gives a good candidate for such model.
- It's full-featured markup language.
- It's industrial standard.
- It may help to implement XSL-FO -> PDF transformation functionality as
well as HTML rendering functionality (HTML -> PDF conversion).

Is there anybody who has experience in this area?
Any feedback, thoughts and suggestions are welcomed.


With best regards,
Alexander Veremyev.
basecode
2007-07-26 12:48:42 UTC
Permalink
Post by Alexander Veremyev
I would like to open discussion concerning Zend_Pdf document abstraction
model.
Hi Alexander,

as a PHP Developer and user of Apache FOP, I'm highly interested in a
formatter written in PHP... so I could leave the Java-Planet for now.

This formatter written in PHP should be fast, conforming to the Standards
and be easy to handle. For the first two points, I think having an
abstraction model (like XSL-FO) on top of the Zend Freamework on top of the
PHP5 engine should be fast enough for some PDF pages. But what about a
(little) book with 30 or 50 pages? Are there any performance pitfalls? Is
there a maximum number of pages?

The W3C XSL-FO 1.0 standard depends on a long list of objects and
properties. How many of them do you plan to support? For me this is one of
the main questions on this topic. The average web developer will hardly ever
need the Common Hyphenation Properties, e.g.

With best regards,
Tobias F.

PS: The same idea with FPDF (Development stopped):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xslfo2pdf/
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Zend_Pdf-document-abstraction-model-tf4132304s16154.html#a11809796
Sent from the Zend MFS mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Alexander Veremyev
2007-08-08 01:02:54 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

I just finished this in a little bit more details
(http://framework.zend.com/wiki/x/nI0).

Any thoughts or comments?


With best regards,
Alexander Veremyev.
Post by Alexander Veremyev
Hi,
I would like to open discussion concerning Zend_Pdf document abstraction
model.
There were a lot of requests for tables, text blocks, headers, footnotes
and other text decoration functionality in ZF mailing lists.
I am sure we should produce some abstract document model to get
consistent rich text drawing API.
Such model should also define internal document representation and
supported or potential features.
I see XSL-FO gives a good candidate for such model.
- It's full-featured markup language.
- It's industrial standard.
- It may help to implement XSL-FO -> PDF transformation functionality as
well as HTML rendering functionality (HTML -> PDF conversion).
Is there anybody who has experience in this area?
Any feedback, thoughts and suggestions are welcomed.
With best regards,
Alexander Veremyev.
Dan Rossi
2007-08-08 01:12:31 UTC
Permalink
Hi ive done stuff with FOP before, the engine would be via java correct
? Ive managed to run these by command line and java classes. I would
also possibly look at docbook format aswell maybe ? I noticed that FOP
cannot create nice bookmark links like docbook can. So if you want to
create books from content docbook is the goer. If you just want
printable views of pages FOP is the goer as the bookmark links is just
the pages.

Is FOP a C command line aswell ?
Post by Alexander Veremyev
Hi,
I just finished this in a little bit more details
(http://framework.zend.com/wiki/x/nI0).
Any thoughts or comments?
With best regards,
Alexander Veremyev.
Post by Alexander Veremyev
Hi,
I would like to open discussion concerning Zend_Pdf document abstraction
model.
There were a lot of requests for tables, text blocks, headers, footnotes
and other text decoration functionality in ZF mailing lists.
I am sure we should produce some abstract document model to get
consistent rich text drawing API.
Such model should also define internal document representation and
supported or potential features.
I see XSL-FO gives a good candidate for such model.
- It's full-featured markup language.
- It's industrial standard.
- It may help to implement XSL-FO -> PDF transformation functionality
as well as HTML rendering functionality (HTML -> PDF conversion).
Is there anybody who has experience in this area?
Any feedback, thoughts and suggestions are welcomed.
With best regards,
Alexander Veremyev.
Dan Rossi
2007-08-08 01:20:31 UTC
Permalink
Sorry thinking about this again, im assuming XSL-FO is the xsl is setup
right and customisable it could be parsed via PHP correct ?
Post by Dan Rossi
Hi ive done stuff with FOP before, the engine would be via java
correct ? Ive managed to run these by command line and java classes. I
would also possibly look at docbook format aswell maybe ? I noticed
that FOP cannot create nice bookmark links like docbook can. So if you
want to create books from content docbook is the goer. If you just
want printable views of pages FOP is the goer as the bookmark links is
just the pages.
Is FOP a C command line aswell ?
Post by Alexander Veremyev
Hi,
I just finished this in a little bit more details
(http://framework.zend.com/wiki/x/nI0).
Any thoughts or comments?
With best regards,
Alexander Veremyev.
Post by Alexander Veremyev
Hi,
I would like to open discussion concerning Zend_Pdf document
abstraction
model.
There were a lot of requests for tables, text blocks, headers, footnotes
and other text decoration functionality in ZF mailing lists.
I am sure we should produce some abstract document model to get
consistent rich text drawing API.
Such model should also define internal document representation and
supported or potential features.
I see XSL-FO gives a good candidate for such model.
- It's full-featured markup language.
- It's industrial standard.
- It may help to implement XSL-FO -> PDF transformation
functionality as well as HTML rendering functionality (HTML -> PDF
conversion).
Is there anybody who has experience in this area?
Any feedback, thoughts and suggestions are welcomed.
With best regards,
Alexander Veremyev.
Alexander Veremyev
2007-08-08 19:07:59 UTC
Permalink
Hi Dan,

"Extreme simplicity" framework guidelines also suppose that ZF doesn't
depend on any non-standard extensions and doesn't need extra
configuration.
So, I don't see this functionality implemented using Apache FOP or any
other external formatting object processor.

Moreover, the major goal is to develop completed and consistent document
model, which gives consistent and extensible PHP API.
It must cover drawing features we want/can implement now and plan/will
want to implement in future.

I believe W3C has developed document model lain under XSL-FO good enough
:) and it covers all possible drawing/formatting features we will want
to implement in future.


We may use different internal document representations:
- structure of PHP objects (like in the Wiki document);
- XML string containing xsl-fo document;
- DOMDocument object containing xsl-fo document;
...

In principle all these representations are equivalent and document may
be easily converted from one to another because of lack of impedance
mismatch problem.
So we will get XSL-FO => PDF conversion functionality as a side effect.


With best regards,
Alexander Veremyev.
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 5:21 AM
To: Alexander Veremyev
Subject: Re: [fw-general] Re: [fw-formats] Zend_Pdf document
abstraction model
Sorry thinking about this again, im assuming XSL-FO is the
xsl is setup right and customisable it could be parsed via
PHP correct ?
Post by Dan Rossi
Hi ive done stuff with FOP before, the engine would be via java
correct ? Ive managed to run these by command line and java
classes. I
Post by Dan Rossi
would also possibly look at docbook format aswell maybe ? I noticed
that FOP cannot create nice bookmark links like docbook
can. So if you
Post by Dan Rossi
want to create books from content docbook is the goer. If you just
want printable views of pages FOP is the goer as the
bookmark links is
Post by Dan Rossi
just the pages.
Is FOP a C command line aswell ?
Post by Alexander Veremyev
Hi,
I just finished this in a little bit more details
(http://framework.zend.com/wiki/x/nI0).
Any thoughts or comments?
With best regards,
Alexander Veremyev.
Post by Alexander Veremyev
Hi,
I would like to open discussion concerning Zend_Pdf document
abstraction model.
There were a lot of requests for tables, text blocks, headers,
footnotes
and other text decoration functionality in ZF mailing lists.
I am sure we should produce some abstract document model to get
consistent rich text drawing API.
Such model should also define internal document
representation and
Post by Dan Rossi
Post by Alexander Veremyev
Post by Alexander Veremyev
supported or potential features.
I see XSL-FO gives a good candidate for such model.
- It's full-featured markup language.
- It's industrial standard.
- It may help to implement XSL-FO -> PDF transformation
functionality as well as HTML rendering functionality
(HTML -> PDF
Post by Dan Rossi
Post by Alexander Veremyev
Post by Alexander Veremyev
conversion).
Is there anybody who has experience in this area?
Any feedback, thoughts and suggestions are welcomed.
With best regards,
Alexander Veremyev.
Loading...