World: r3wp

what you can do is create a stream of text, and then flow it across 
multiple text boxes, or multiple pages.

eg ?

for example, see the text that starts at page 4 in the test.pdf file?

that is defined in the test-pdfm.r file where it says:

text book [
    ....
]

then, the pages are defined as:

    any [
        textbox  10 29 90 248 from book
        textbox 110 29 90 248 from book
    ]

which means: "create ANY number of pages, as necessary, using the 
following as the template for each page"

so that means you must have headers and footers too?

the template can include anything you wish, images, other text, etc.

i don't remember if page numbers are implemented or not

so book is the template?

book is the text stream. the block with the two textboxes is the 
template (two columns)

the text stream is flown inside the columns.

so, it gets rendered inside the first textbox, any text that does 
not fit goes to the second textbox, if there is still more text, 
a new page is created and so on.

ok understood

you can have different templates for even and odd pages.

drop-image?

flowing text around an image? not implemented yet. it's not trivial 
unless the image is fixed within the text. (this is a limitation 
of the TeX algorithm, the width of each row of text must be known 
in advance)

drop-image load %"Gabriele Fototessera small.jpg"

ah, i think that is a custom function. you can define your own "functions" 
or "macros" within the dialect.

define-func 'drop-image [img font size /local iw ih lh mrgns] [
            (
                iw: img/size/x / 5.34
                ih: img/size/y / 5.34
                lh: pdfm/get-font-info font size
                lh: lh/max-height + lh/max-depth
                mrgns: copy [0 0]
                loop round/ceiling ih / lh - 1 [
                    repend mrgns [iw + 2 0]
                ]
                append mrgns [0 0]
                none
            )
            justify with margins mrgns box iw lh 0 [
                image xbl ybl - ih + lh iw ih img
            ] space 2
            font* font size
        ]

ahh... ok

as you see, it determines the image size, then sets the text margins 
so that you can make it flow around the image. it's a "trick" but 
it works if the image is not fixed within the page but moves around 
with the text, and you know it won't be split across pages.

so if you were doing a watermark you don't alter the text margins

correct.

you can also just put the image below the text boxes in the page 
template in that case.

for a floating signature?

you can use a vbox [ ... ] and put any graphic command inside it.

a box is "inline", eg, it is treated like it was a character. a vbox 
is considered more like a paragraph.

Carl should use pdf-maker to generate PDFs of the online docs

Is qtask using pdf-maker?

no. initially, we wanted to use it for wikis (ie. see my qml to pdf 
code), but the fact that the pdf was not an exact replica of the 
html output was not considered acceptable.

I tried this 

			append new-page compose/deep [
				textbox 10 10 100 100 [
					image 0 0 40 40 (load %247logo.png)
				]
			]
and not seeing any image in the pdf ..

graphic commands such as image are separate from text commands. inside 
a text "context", you can use box or vbox to enter a graphic "context". 
(also, you don't need the compose, as the dialect will try to evaluate 
arguments anyway.)

So:

    textbox 10 10 100 100 [
        box [image 0 0 40 40 load %247logo.png]
    ]


The difference between BOX and VBOX is that the former is treated 
like a character, while the latter is treated like a paragraph. (So 
you can have the former in the middle of a text line.)

ok, I'll try it again .. just with the above I got an error about 
expecting an image so I added the compose

Unless there's a bug, that should work...

When I use this command, I don't get an image, and my 13 page pdf 
stops at the first page

this is the end of the file 

endstream
endobj
8 0 obj
<< /Type /Pages /Kids [6 0 R] /Count 1 >>
endobj
1 0 obj
<< /Type /Catalog /Version /1.4 /Outlines 2 0 R /Pages 8 0 R >>
endobj
2 0 obj
<< /Type /Outlines /Count 0 >>
endobj
3 0 obj
[/PDF /Text /ImageC]
endobj
xref
0 9
0000000000 65535 f 
0000005180 00000 n 
0000005259 00000 n 
0000005305 00000 n 
0000000009 00000 n 
0000000111 00000 n 
0000000208 00000 n 
0000000414 00000 n 
0000005123 00000 n 
trailer
<< /Size 9 /Root 1 0 R >>
startxref
5341
%%EOF

there's no png there...

ah, sorry, box requires more args, checking...

box width height depth [...gfx commands...]

depth controls the offset relative to the text baseline, for eg. 
the letter 'q' has a positive depth because the stem goes below the 
text baseline.

ok, trying again

append new-page compose/deep [
				textbox 10 10 100 100 [
					box 60 60 10 [image 0 0 40 40 load %247logo.png]
				]
			]

Doesn't work either

similar 

justify with margins mrgns box iw lh 0 [
                image xbl ybl - ih + lh iw ih img
            ] space 2

uh... while testing this, i got this:

>> i: load http://www.rebol.com/graphics/reb-logo.gif
connecting to: www.rebol.com
== GIF89a\ufffd
>> load read/binary http://www.rebol.com/graphics/reb-logo.gif
connecting to: www.rebol.com
Segmentation fault

linux?

of course

ah, wait, that was probably my fault... (yes, linux, i guess it should 
not segfault though)

this works for me:


b: layout-pdf [[textbox [box 60 60 10 [image 0 0 40 40 load http://www.rebol.com/graphics/reb-logo.gif]]]]

the image comes at the bottom though, which does not look correct, 
so I'm probably forgetting something...