Generate PDF from Plone content types - pdf

I need to create PDFs from content types (made with dexerity if that matters) so that the user creates a new document and after filling the form a PDF is generated and ready to be downloaded. So basically after creating/modifying the document a PDF should be created and stored in ZODB (actually I'm using blobs) so that I could link the view with a "Download as PDF".
I've seen PDFNode but it doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for. There's also Produce & Publish but it's a webservice(?) and the company I'm going to develop this for doesn't want (for privacy) to send data outside their datacenters.
Any idea?

It seems that you are searching for these:
Reportlab (official site) for a custom solution
collective.sendaspdf for an ootb solution

I actually do this sort of thing a lot on a project of mine. I used Products.SmartPrintNG and fop for it though and didn't do it the standard way that the product uses(I think it uses javascript to initiate the conversion.. weird).
Couple things:
I had to sanitize the output since fop is pretty touchy
used lxml
mine uses archetypes
Anyways, my event handler for creating the PDF ends up looking something like this:
from Products.SmartPrintNG.browser import SmartPrintView
from lxml.cssselect import CSSSelector
from lxml.html import fromstring, tostring
import re
san_re = re.compile('(?P<width>width\=("|\')\d{1,5}(px|%|in|cm|mm|em|ex|pt|pc)?("|\'))')
class Options(object):
def __init__(self, __dict):
self.__dict = __dict
def __getattr__(self, attr):
if self.__dict.has_key(attr):
return self.__dict[attr]
raise AttributeError(attr)
def sanitize_xml(xml):
selector = CSSSelector('table,td,tr')
elems = selector(xml)
for el in elems:
if el.attrib.has_key('width'):
width = el.attrib['width']
style = el.attrib.get('style', '').strip()
if style and not style.endswith(';'):
style += ';'
style += 'width:%s;' % width
del el.attrib['width']
el.attrib['style'] = style
return xml
def save_pdf(obj, event):
smartprint = SmartPrintView(obj, obj.REQUEST)
html = obj.restrictedTraverse('view')()
xml = fromstring(html)
selector = CSSSelector('div#content')
xml = selector(xml)
html = tostring(sanitize_xml(xml[0]))
res = smartprint.convert(
html=html,
format='pdf2',
options=Options({'stylesheet': 'pdf_output_stylesheet', 'template': 'StandardTemplate'})
)
field = obj.getField('generatedPDF')
field.set(obj, res, mimetype='application/pdf', _initializing_=True)
field.setFilename(obj, obj.getId() + '.pdf')

Produce and Publish Lite is self-contained, open-source code and the successor to SmartPrintNG. http://pypi.python.org/pypi/zopyx.smartprintng.lite/

use z3c.rml, works very well to produce pdf from an rml template, instead of converting from html which can be tricky.

Related

How to adjust font size in syncfusion html to pdf

I am able to convert HTML to PDF using syncfusion.
The issue I have is it doesn't obey the font sizes
var htmlText = "<html><head><style>body{font-size:50px;}</style></head><body>Hello</body></html>";
var convertedHtmlDocument = ConvertFromHtml(htmlText);
var ms = new MemoryStream();
var fpath = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory + "myfile.pdf";
SaveToFile(convertedHtmlDocument, fpath);
ms.Dispose();
It doesn't matter if I make the font size in the CSS 50 or 5, the font comes out the same size.
I also tried (same issue):
var htmlText = "<html><head><style>.myclass {font-size:50px;}</style></head><body><div class="myapp">Hello</div></body></html>";
Exporting the above 2 to an .html document behaves as the syntax suggests.
If I change my CSS to use table then it works, but I want to have a single font size for the document, not just the table
var htmlText = "<html><head><style>table{font-size:50px;}</style></head><body>Hello</body></html>"; //this works
What am I doing wrong?
We have checked the reported issue with different font size but it is working properly on our end. We have attached the sample and output for your reference.
Sample: https://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/support/directtrac/general/ze/WPF1621828031
Output: https://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/support/directtrac/general/ze/Output259867595
If still you have facing the issue, we request you share the modified code sample, input html text and product version ,screenshot of the issue to check this on our end. It will be helpful for us to analyse and assist you further on this.

How can I create the resource string without a big string?

In After Effects scripts, if you want your script to be able to be docked in the program's workspace, the only way to do it as far as I know is to use a resource string like this:
var res = "Group{orientation:'column', alignment:['fill', 'fill'], alignChildren:['fill', 'fill'],\
group1: Group{orientation:'column', alignment:['fill', ''], alignChildren:['fill', ''],\
button1: Button{text: 'Button'},\
},\
}";
myPanel.grp = myPanel.add(res);
The above code creates a script UI with one button ("button1") inside a group ("group1").
I would like to know other ways to create the same resource string. Is it possible to make it using a JSON object and then stringifying it??
I know it can be done somehow, because I have inspected the Duik Bassel script that is dockable and, for example, adds elements like this:
var button1 = myPal.add( 'button' );
but I cannot understand how to do it myself.
TL;DR: I want to make a dockable scriptUI without writing a giant string all at once, but bit by bit, like a floating script.
UI container elements have an add() method which allows you to add other UI elements to them, and you can treat them as normal objects.
var grp = myPanel.add("group");
grp.orientation = "column";
grp.alignment = ['fill', 'fill'];
grp.alignChildren = ['fill', 'fill'];
var group1 = grp.add("group");
…
var button1 = group1.add("button");
button1.text = 'Button'
More details and examples here: https://extendscript.docsforadobe.dev/user-interface-tools/types-of-controls.html#containers
Also worth checking out https://scriptui.joonas.me/ which is a visual scriptUI interface builder. You have to do some work on the code it produces to get panels for AE, but it's not hard.
extendscript still uses a 20th century version of javaScript, which doesn't have JSON built-in, but I have successfully used a JSON polyfill with it.
I used json2.js to get structured data in and out of Illustrator, and it worked beautifully, but I can see there's now a json3.js which might be better for whatever reason. This stackoverflow question addresses the differences.
To load another .js file (such as a polyfill) into your script, you need to do something like
var scriptsFolder = (new File($.fileName)).parent; // hacky but effective
$.evalFile(scriptsFolder + "/lib/json2.js"); // load JSON polyfill
These file locations may differ in other Adobe apps. Not sure what it would be in AfterEffects. I seem to remember that InDesign has a different location for scripts. You can also hardcode the path, of course.
Good luck!

How to use PDDestination class in PDFbox?

How to use PDDestination class in PDFbox ?
whether getPagenumber() method will return the current page number
can any one share u r views
Thanks
The usage of PDDestination or PDAction is very similar to the one of PdfDestination or PdfAction of iText.
So you may want to search iText examples firstly.
Specifically on PDFBox,
e.g.
the following makes the first open page to page 5.
PDDestination dest = new PDPageDestination();
// When you open this PDF, you will see page 5.
dest.setPageNumber(4)
PDActionGoTo action = new PDActionGoTo();
action.setDestination(dest);
document.getDocumentCatalog().setOpenAction(action);

Is there a way to add "alt text" to links in PDFs in Adobe Acrobat?

In Adobe Acrobat Pro, it's not that difficult to add links to a page, but I'm wondering if there's also a way to add "alt text" (sometimes called "title text") to links as well. In HTML, this would be done as such:
link
Then when the mouse is hovering over the link, the text appears as a little tooltip. Is there an equivalent for PDFs? And if so, how do you add it?
Actually PDF does support alternate text. It's part of Logical Structure documented PDF Reference 1.7 section 10.8.2 "Alternate Descriptions"
/Span << /Lang (en-us) /Alt (six-point star) >> BDC (✡) Tj EMC
In PDF syntax, Link annotations support a Contents entry to serve as an alternate description:
/Annots [
<<
/Type /Annot
/Subtype /Link
/Border [1 1 1]
/Dest [4 0 R /XYZ 0 0 null]
/Rect [ 50 50 80 60 ]
/Contents (Link)
>>
]
Quoting "PDF Reference - 6th edition - Adobe® Portable Document Format - Version 1.7 - November 2006" :
Contents text string (Optional) Text to be displayed for the annotation or, if this type of annotation does not display text, an alternate description of the annotation’s contents in human-readable form. In either case, this text is useful when extracting the document’s contents in support of accessibility to users with disabilities or for other purposes
And later on:
For all other annotation types (Link , Movie , Widget , PrinterMark , and TrapNet), the Contents entry provides an alternate representation of the annotation’s contents in human-readable form
This is displayed well with Sumatra PDF v3.1.2, when a border is present:
However this is not widely supported by other PDF readers.
The W3C, in its PDF Techniques for WCAG 2.0 recommend another ways to display alternative texts on links for accessibility purposes:
PDF11: Providing links and link text using the Link annotation and the /Link structure element in PDF documents
PDF13: Providing replacement text using the /Alt entry for links in PDF documents
No, it's not possible to add alt text to a link in a PDF. There's no provision for this in the PDF reference.
On a related note, links in PDFs and links in HTML documents are handled quite differently. A link in a PDF is actually a type of annotation, which sits on top of the page at specified co-ordinates, and has no technical relationship to the text or image in the document. Where as links in HTML documents bare a direct relationpship to the elements which they hyperlink.
Alt text, or alternate text, is not the same as title text. Title text is meta data intended for human consumption. Alt text is alternate text content upon media in case the media fails to load.
There is also a trick using an invisible form button that doesn't do anything but allows a small popup tooltip text to be added when the mouse hovers over it.
Officially, per PDF 1.7 as defined in ISO 32000-1 14.9.3 (see Adobe website for a free download of a document that is equivaent to the ISO standard for PDF 1.7), one would provide alternate text for an annotation - like for example a Link annotation - by adding a key "Contents" to its data structure and provide the alt text as a text string value for that key.
Unfortunately Acrobat does not seem to provide a user interface to add or edit this "Contents" text string for Link annotations, and even if it is present it will not be used for the tool tip. Instead the tool tip always seems to be the target of the Link annotation, at least if it points to a URL.
So on a visual level one could hack around this by adding some other invisible elements on top of the area of the Link annotation that have the desired behavior. Not a very nice hack, at least for my taste. In addition it does not help with accessibility of the PDF, as it introduces yet another stray object...
Facing the same problem I used the JS lib "pdf-lib" (https://pdf-lib.js.org/docs/api/classes/pdfdocument) to edit the content of the pdf file and add the missing attributes on annotations.
const pdfLib = require('pdf-lib');
const fs = require('fs');
function getNewMap(pdfDoc, str){
return pdfDoc.context.obj(
{
Alt: new pdfLib.PDFString(str),
Contents: new pdfLib.PDFString(str)
}).dict;
}
const pdfData = await fs.readFile('your-pdf-document.pdf');
const pdfDoc = await pdfLib.PDFDocument.load(pdfData);
pdfDoc.context.enumerateIndirectObjects().forEach(_o => {
const pdfRef = _o[0];
const pdfObject = _o[1];
if (typeof pdfObject?.lookup === "function"){
if (pdfObject.lookup(pdfLib.PDFName.of('Type'))?.encodedName === "/Annot"){
// We use the link URI to implement annotation "Alt" & "Contents" attributes
const annotLinkUri = pdfObject.lookup(pdfLib.PDFName.of('A')).get(pdfLib.PDFName.of('URI')).value;
const titleFromUri = annotLinkUri.replace(/(http:|)(^|\/\/)(.*?\/)/g, "").replace(/\//g, "").trim();
// We build the new map with "Alt" and "Contents" attributes and assign it to the "Annot" object dictionnary
const newMap = getNewMap(pdfDoc, titleFromUri);
const newdict = new Map([...pdfObject.dict, ...newMap]);
pdfObject.dict = newdict;
}
}
})
// We save the file
const pdfBytes = await pdfDoc.save();
await fs.promises.writeFile("your-pdf-document-accessible.pdf", pdfBytes);

How to use Silverlight 4 Beta Print Preview?

One of the Silverlight 4 features listed in a lot of the PDC documents is Print Preview.
I've searched for examples on how to use this and found nothing so far. Has anyone got this working yet? Can you give me some pointers on how to implement a simple web app with print preview in.
I have not seen print preview as any of them but actual Printing support in which you can control which controls are printed and events based on the printing process.
After looking for a while I found a way to do this by combining some features I found in other projects, but they used it for image manipulation. I tried with printing and it seems to work fine.
Here how it works:
Get the base container for the print contents converted to a bitmap by using WriteableBitmap, here I´ll use a Canvas:
WriteableBitmap wb = new WriteableBitmap(this.canvas1, null);
Use this bitmap as a source for a Image control (can be inside a ScrollViewer, what is even better).
this.imagePreview.Height = wb.PixelHeight;
this.imagePreview.Width = wb.PixelWidth;
this.imagePreview.Source = wb;
Set scaling base units (used 1 percent in this case):
Point scale = new Point();
scale.X = imagePreview.Width/100d;
scale.Y = imagePreview.Height/100d;
Then adjust the scaling using a Slider (optional)
private void vSlider_ValueChanged(object sender, RoutedPropertyChangedEventArgs<double> e)
{
imagePreview.Height = scale.Y * vSlider.Value;
imagePreview.Width = scale.X * vSlider.Value;
}
I think from the lack of responses and the fact that as Hurricanepkt pointed out in his reply Tim Heuer and others talk about a virtual print which if displying the same thing on the screen could be built quite easily into your own bespoke Print Preview functionality that the Print Preview listed in some lists is actually people misinterpretting what the Virtual Print documents actually are.