I'm trying to create generate dynamic pdf generating from html (will also involve images too, not just text) in asp.net core and thinking of using either jsReport or Syncfusion for this. which is better? any pros and cons for both? speed? Please what are your thoughts?
Syncfusion HTML to PDF converter supports conversion in .NET Core using WebKit rendering engine. WebKit rendering engine preserves the output PDF document like how the input HTML file/URL is displayed on the WebKit based web browsers (safari). The performance of the converter is purely depends of the input HTML file/URL. The output PDF document preserves all the graphics, images, text, fonts, and the layout of the original HTML document/webpage. So, we suggest you to try our WebKit rendering engine for converting HTML to PDF.
WebKit rendering engine supports more features such as JavaScript, additional delay, bookmarks, forms, toc etc., when converting the HTML to PDF, Please refer below links for more information about HTML to PDF converter.
UG : https://help.syncfusion.com/file-formats/pdf/convert-html-to-pdf/webkit
FT : https://www.syncfusion.com/pdf-framework/net/html-to-pdf
Online Sample : https://mvc.syncfusion.com/demos/web/pdf/htmltopdf
Note: I work for Syncfusion.
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I'm developing a UWP app for tablet and i need to generate a PDF with data from SQLite. I need to do this completely offline because where I will use the app there is no connection. What could I do?
I'd prefer not to use paid libraries like Syncfusion and XFinium so I'm trying to find an alternative solution.
I tried with iTextSharp but unfortunately I can't find a good documentation to render a complex PDF or to export a Bitmap generated from a Grid Component to a PDF File.
Why not render your data into a webpage displayed with a WebView control? Then you can use any permissive licensed javascript library to generate the PDF.
If it hasn't changed much, then you can only send text back and forth between your WebView and UWP app, but that's workable. Your final PDF result can be read back as a base64 encoded string.
A very quick search found this one that seems easy to use and you can just download the source to put into your app:
https://github.com/MrRio/jsPDF
We are building a web app where the user can make a design by using fabric.js and at the end he should receive a pdf file with his work.
At first, we tried to use JSPDF because it was prefered to have a cliente-side solution. However by doing pdf.addImage(canvas.toDataURL(),...) we are rasterizing the design.
In second place, we tried server side solution using WKHTMLTOPDF, sending canvas.toSVG(), but there are some issues with fonts and shapes rendering.
The designs are complex as they can have text, shapes, images and svg.
We also tried INKSCAPE (inkscape --without-gui --export-pdf ...), MPDF and MUPDF without good results. IMAGEMAGICK is not a solution has it also rasterize the design.
The main goal is to get a vector pdf, where it's possible to increase size and where the elements of the design are selectable, and if possible that pdf should be ready to print (300 dpi and cmyk)
Yes its possible using TCPDF library.
Please check this ImageSVG api for more information for converting SVG to PDF.
https://tcpdf.org/examples/example_058/
Export the canvas to svg and use pdflib to make the pdf.
You can find an exemple here:https://www.pdflib.com/pdflib-cookbook/graphics/starter-svg/
I'm using Apache FOP to generate a PDF through XML and XSL-FO. I have a cell in my generated PDF that I need to be able to scroll through if the content overflows it. XSL-FO has an overflow="scroll" feature, but based on my research on the topic it seems that Apache FOP does not support this option.
For example, here is a scrollable region in a PDF used by a large CAD company that I need to replicate:
Is there any way to enable this feature in Apache FOP? Is it possible to enable it in the source code (I haven't been able to find a way to do so)? Any other ways to tackle this issue?
No, it isn't possible.
From the FO perspective:
In the XSL-FO Recommendation the scroll value for the property overflow comes from the corresponding CSS2 definition, which includes this clarification:
When this value is specified and the target medium is "print", overflowing content should be printed.
As the PDF output is a print-oriented medium, I read this as a confirmation that FOP is correct in printing the overflowing content.
From the PDF perspective:
In the PDF Reference 6th edition, a search for the word "scroll" returns results referring either to the scrolling bars in the user interface or in interactive forms (text fields, list boxes, combo boxes).
There is not, or at least I could not find it, a "static text object, but with scrolling bars" feature (which is probably sensible for a print-oriented format), so FOP cannot create it in the PDF output file, not even modifying the source code.
A second look at your comment and the screenshot you included made me think it could be an example of the 3D Artwork feature of the PDF format, a feature I didn't know of before (and I still know nothing besides its name). According to the reference:
Specific views of 3D artwork can be specified, including a default view that is displayed initially and other views that can be selected. Views can have names that can be presented in a user interface.
So, I think your screenshot shows the different views associated to a 3D object; it is not a general-purpose feature that could be used to provide scrollable text.
Well, it could be possible ...
It is possible but as far as I know not with Apache FOP. Without seeing the PDF in question and guessing from the screen shot, it looks like a Flash widget inserted into the PDF. This in PDF terms is a RichMedia annotation (requires PDF version 1.7 with extensions) in which you can insert the Flash widget as well as other controlling files (like XML, other images to display, etc.) and relate them together.
AFAIK, only RenderX XEP (whom I work for) supports such RichMedia annotations inserted into PDF via XSL FO through the rx:rich-media-object extension documented here: http://www.renderx.com/reference.html#Rich Media
I believe, the only viewer that supports PDF with RichMedia annotations is Adobe Reader so it is required to view such a file. Here is a sample that includes a few interactive flash widgets, some interactive charts all within a few page PDF that was generated long ago. NOTE: I am sure some of the links in the document do not go anywhere, it was for a trade show many years ago. Remember, you would need to download this file and view in Adobe Reader and have flash player installed to see it function.
http://www.cloudformatter.com/Resources/Samples/RichMedia.pdf
You cannot use common PDF browser-based viewers like Chrome or Firefox as they do not support this type of annotation.
A screenshot of page one here shows an interactive, scrolling widget. Page 4 contains a widget similar to what you show in your example.
Page 4 scrolling widget very similar to your request:
The widget on the last page is created using a scroller SWF that takes parameters that are the images and setup/configuration files that are XML. The RenderX extension object takes these as parameters and embeds all of them in the document for the interactive flash widget so that it is totally self-contai9ned in the PDF. The XSL FO to do this is:
<rx:rich-media-object name="Sample HTML Widget" scaling="non-uniform" width="611.92pt"
height="74.99pt" content-width="scale-to-fit" src="url('rx-scroller\dockmenu.swf')"
transparency="true" activate-condition="page_visible">
<rx:flash-var name="setupXML" value="rx-dock-settings.xml"/>
<rx:flash-var name="contentXML" value="rx-dock-contents.xml"/>
<rx:rich-media-resource name="rx-dock-settings.xml"
src="url('rx-scroller\rx-dock-settings.xml')"/>
<rx:rich-media-resource name="rx-dock-contents.xml"
src="url('rx-scroller\rx-dock-contents.xml')"/>
<rx:rich-media-resource name="style.css" src="url('rx-scroller\css\style.css')"/>
<rx:rich-media-resource name="customer1.png" src="url('rx-scroller\images\customer1.png')"/>
<rx:rich-media-resource name="customer2.png" src="url('rx-scroller\images\customer2.png')"/>
<rx:rich-media-resource name="customer3.png" src="url('rx-scroller\images\customer3.png')"/>
<rx:rich-media-resource name="customer4.png" src="url('rx-scroller\images\customer4.png')"/>
<rx:rich-media-resource name="customer5.png" src="url('rx-scroller\images\customer5.png')"/>
<rx:rich-media-resource name="customer6.png" src="url('rx-scroller\images\customer6.png')"/>
</rx:rich-media-object>
And note that many things that are in the flash would work, like links and such. It is just a pure, interactive flash inserted into PDF as the container.
Indeed it looks like this is not possible to achieve through FOP.
Continuing to dig around for a few days, however, I did find a clever post-processing alternative that is also free, essentially embedding a PDF inside of another PDF using the LaTeX animate package.
A drawback to this method is that it is not possible to embed links inside of the scrollable region, which is a major issue for me. But the method does enable inserting a scrollable region inside of an existing PDF and got me very close to what I was trying to achieve.
I would like to write documentation using Jekyll with HTML and PDF outputs. Html can have a navigation but the PDF should have table of contents. Is there a free and easy way to do that?
The HTML part is easy but I would like to use #media print CSS for making the PDF file.
I have a few ideas how to do this.
Use PrinceXML, unfortunately this is commercial product with a nasty price tag ~$500
Use WKHTMLTOPDF
Use Maruku, since it is possible to do a PDF conversion using it
I would like to have multiple pages HTML and single page PDF with a TOC. Any suggestions?
Btw. Buildr has solved this problem using PrinceXML.
If 'free' is your most important criterion, than wkhtmltopdf is your best bet. It supports things like covers, toc, headers, footers and sections. Depending on how exotic the layout of your document will be, you most likely will run into some page-break issues, but with a bit of tinkering you should be fine.
I've been using wkhtmltopdf for a bit now, with some quite complicated documents (with javascript charts, tables, svg images, etc.) and have not run into too many issues.
Make sure you use the static version of wkhtmltopdf, as it is the only version which supports rendering of a TOC page.
You can use the PDFKit gem, which uses wkhtmltopdf behind the scenes. Then you can put your PDF logic in a Jekyll plugin as a generator or converter.
For generating a table of contents using Jekyll, you can use the {:toc} macro offered by markdown, or write your own textile table of contents filter if you prefer to use textile..
For generating a PDF from Html and CSS, I have found weasyprint to be a good solution. Since they do not rely upon an external engine for rendering, they do not depend upon foreign project's roadmaps for implementing relevant features such as CSS generated content or #page CSS-declarations. (But in contrast to wkhtmltopdf, weasyprint does not parse javascript).
You could also use a browser extension called Awesome Screenshot to create JPEG/PDF from a page. The extension allows you to create a full-page image or export it to PDF. With this tool, you can export all pages really quickly (and/or later combine all PDFs together to create a single document).
I am aware this is a quick & dirty solution (not perfect). E.g: while using images instead of text, the full-text search will not work. Additionally, it may require some manual work, but it does the job when you just want to read it.
Can anyone suggest/recommend a product that can be used to dynamically produce PDFs that can contain high-res images?
We're currently using a product called Highwire from a company called Corda to produce PDFs of our HTML pages.
Highwire is crap at producing PDFs though becuase it does not conform to HTML standards (i.e. it requires table layouts rather than CSS/Div layouts). We have to use it though because it is capable of incorporating high-definition SVG images into its PDF output.
Thanks
Dave
What about Prince?
It can handle XHTML and CSS just fine as well as SVG.
I used Apache FOP together with this stylesheet from HTML to XSL-FO with success in some projects. Embedding SVG ist straight forward, since FOP incorporates Batik, Apache's SVG library. You can copy SVG images 1:1 to the XSL-FO file.