[XML-SIG] xml to pdf... a newbie question...

Gisbert Amm gia@webde-ag.de
Tue, 4 Mar 2003 10:43:44 +0100


> thanks... i'm currently downloading it now...
> 
> how about if i choose to present the reports in postscript???
> 
> is there a python application that can change xml/xsl to postscript???
>
I'm afraid there isn't a out-of-the-box solution. But I don't know exactly.

The only way to create Postscript I know is from DocBook XML via Latex to
Postscript, but that's a thorny path and seems somewhat oversized just for
some reports ...

On the other hand: If you want to be flexible with future output formats,
write out your data from Python to XML (stream or file) and then transform
it with XSLT to the format you want. 

There are several XSLT engines in general and for python, most popular
perhaps Saxon (Java) and 4xslt (Python) and Xalan (C++, Java) for which
exists a Python interface called Pyana which I use currently. And FOP, as
you certainly know, can generate PDF from XML directly (using the
appropriate XSLT).

Be aware of the work to do with XSLT (and to learn it, if you're not already
typing it fluently).

If PDF is the only format you need, ReportLab is a good choice.

Regards
Gisbert Amm