Kirk Strauser wrote:
> Short question:
>
> Is there a good library for generating HTML-style tables with the equivalent
> of colspans, automatically sized columns, etc. that can render directly to
> PDF?
>
> Longer question:
>
> I'm re-doing a big chunk of locally-written code. I have a
> report-generating function that takes a list of lists of lists as input and
> returns either a PDF, an HTML table, or an Excel spreadsheet as requested.
> For example, input might look like:
>
> makereport('html',
> headers=['Invoice number', 'Customer', 'Price'],
> data=[
> [['123', 'John Doe', '$50.00'],
> ['Ordered on 2008-01-01 via the website']],
> [['124', 'Peter Bilt', '$25.99'],
> ['Mail via African swallow']]
> ])
>
>
> <snip>
>
>
> Now, I have a similar transformation to PDF via pdflatex. This works fairly
> well but requires a bunch of temp files and subprocesses, and I've never
> been 100% happy with the LaTeX output (you have to calculate your own
> column widths, for instance). Since I plan to re-write this anyway, I'd
> like to find a more widely used library if one was available.
>
> <snip>
>
>
Short answer: LaTeX should be good. Use XML source; XSLT to TeXML; TeXML
to LaTeX ( uses a python program); compile to PDF.
Longer answer: Can you provide a minimal example of the kind of
LaTeX source you would ideally like ?
If not, your problem is with LaTeX itself, which has if anything
__too_many__ ways of controlling tables rather than inadequate
ways. If so, we may be able to help with the rather arcane
transformation into TeXML format.
As for all the temp files that LaTeX creates, they are easily dealt
with using a makefile or whatever.
Bye for now,
Ken