Advanced PDF Generation (Templates, Toc,...)
Hi, I try to use XWiki as a CMS and communications platform for the student-reps at my university. XWiki seems to be perfect! We would just need one feature on top of it - a more sophisticated PDF export. We plan to collect all kinds of Information on our platform and do a lot of documentation - some of it also has to be available on paper. PDF Templates would also be great! Therefore I am also highliy interessted in aggregate PDF's with TOC (as Stephen Schaub). Plus there should be a non-geek way to achieve such PDF's. Perhaps like the "clippings"-feature on IHT.com where you mark all the articles you are interessted in and they all appear in the "clippings" dropdown right of the naviation bar. So here is how I imagine it works (for the user): 1) Mark your articles 2) Go to the "PDF Generation" page 3) (Optionally) bring the articles into your favorite order and choose the pdf template (Toc/No-Toc, 1 or 2 columns,...) 4) (Optionally) Save your selection for future use. 5) Click on generate Although I am neither a Java nor XWiki pro I got some XSLT experience and could help with the templates. Please tell me what you think an if there is any chance an advanced pdf generation will be introduced in the future. Or is there another (external) way to achieve this? Looking forward to reading your comments! Thanks, Sascha Oesterle.
Aggregating articles into one PDF can be done using a wizard and scripts in XWiki using the XWiki API.. It's independent from the PDF generation itself.. The objective is to generate an XWiki page which takes multiple pages and aggregates them together.. Scripts are there for this. See for example this page http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Dev/ChildAsOneDoc which does this with child pages. The code is here: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Dev/ChildAsOneDoc?xpage=code& Improving the PDF itself (header, footer, table of content with page numbering) is mode complex and will need XSLT improvements.. The existing tasks for PDF are: - improve header and footer output in XSLT taking the source from some specific HTML blocks. The pdf.vm template would then be improved to create these specific blocks from specific XWiki Objects. - add styles to PDF. For this what is needed is a java module to apply external CSS styles (css files) to their respective XHTML tags.. There must be an OSS module doing this - find a technical solution for page numbering in the table of content (maybe there is a FOP or PDF solution) Ludovic Sascha Österle wrote:
Hi,
I try to use XWiki as a CMS and communications platform for the student-reps at my university. XWiki seems to be perfect! We would just need one feature on top of it - a more sophisticated PDF export. We plan to collect all kinds of Information on our platform and do a lot of documentation - some of it also has to be available on paper. PDF Templates would also be great!
Therefore I am also highliy interessted in aggregate PDF's with TOC (as Stephen Schaub). Plus there should be a non-geek way to achieve such PDF's. Perhaps like the "clippings"-feature on IHT.com where you mark all the articles you are interessted in and they all appear in the "clippings" dropdown right of the naviation bar.
So here is how I imagine it works (for the user):
1) Mark your articles 2) Go to the "PDF Generation" page 3) (Optionally) bring the articles into your favorite order and choose the pdf template (Toc/No-Toc, 1 or 2 columns,...) 4) (Optionally) Save your selection for future use. 5) Click on generate
Although I am neither a Java nor XWiki pro I got some XSLT experience and could help with the templates.
Please tell me what you think an if there is any chance an advanced pdf generation will be introduced in the future. Or is there another (external) way to achieve this?
Looking forward to reading your comments!
Thanks, Sascha Oesterle.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- You receive this message as a subscriber of the [email protected] mailing list. To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected] For general help: mailto:[email protected]?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws
-- Ludovic Dubost XPertNet: http://www.xpertnet.fr/ Blog: http://www.ludovic.org/blog/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost AIM: nvludo Yahoo: ludovic
Hi, I achieved some, lets say, satisfying results by modifing the pdf-footer.vm and pdf-header.vm. I also had a look into the fop docs, seems to be rather complex. Too complex for me - at the moment. Thanks for your hints! Sascha Ludovic Dubost schrieb:
Aggregating articles into one PDF can be done using a wizard and scripts in XWiki using the XWiki API.. It's independent from the PDF generation itself.. The objective is to generate an XWiki page which takes multiple pages and aggregates them together.. Scripts are there for this.
See for example this page http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Dev/ChildAsOneDoc which does this with child pages. The code is here: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Dev/ChildAsOneDoc?xpage=code&
Improving the PDF itself (header, footer, table of content with page numbering) is mode complex and will need XSLT improvements..
The existing tasks for PDF are:
- improve header and footer output in XSLT taking the source from some specific HTML blocks. The pdf.vm template would then be improved to create these specific blocks from specific XWiki Objects. - add styles to PDF. For this what is needed is a java module to apply external CSS styles (css files) to their respective XHTML tags.. There must be an OSS module doing this - find a technical solution for page numbering in the table of content (maybe there is a FOP or PDF solution)
Ludovic
Sascha Österle wrote:
Hi,
I try to use XWiki as a CMS and communications platform for the student-reps at my university. XWiki seems to be perfect! We would just need one feature on top of it - a more sophisticated PDF export. We plan to collect all kinds of Information on our platform and do a lot of documentation - some of it also has to be available on paper. PDF Templates would also be great!
Therefore I am also highliy interessted in aggregate PDF's with TOC (as Stephen Schaub). Plus there should be a non-geek way to achieve such PDF's. Perhaps like the "clippings"-feature on IHT.com where you mark all the articles you are interessted in and they all appear in the "clippings" dropdown right of the naviation bar.
So here is how I imagine it works (for the user):
1) Mark your articles 2) Go to the "PDF Generation" page 3) (Optionally) bring the articles into your favorite order and choose the pdf template (Toc/No-Toc, 1 or 2 columns,...) 4) (Optionally) Save your selection for future use. 5) Click on generate
Although I am neither a Java nor XWiki pro I got some XSLT experience and could help with the templates.
Please tell me what you think an if there is any chance an advanced pdf generation will be introduced in the future. Or is there another (external) way to achieve this?
Looking forward to reading your comments!
Thanks, Sascha Oesterle.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- You receive this message as a subscriber of the [email protected] mailing list. To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected] For general help: mailto:[email protected]?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- You receive this message as a subscriber of the [email protected] mailing list. To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected] For general help: mailto:[email protected]?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws
participants (2)
-
Ludovic Dubost -
Sascha Österle