World: r3wp

who wants to clone Crystal Reports ?
  

We would need a /bloat refinement to do that. :-)

http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/view-script.r?script=crystal-reports.r

For information, I've successfully tested direct printing in Linux 
and OS X using PostScript format documents and CUPS as backend. I'm 
currently trying to implement a Draw dialect compiler targeting PS. 
Unix and OS X support wasn't needed for my project, but I couldn't 
resist to give it a try ;-).

I know that Geomol has built a PS lib but, unfortunately, it doesn't 
take Draw dialect as input.

now it's getting really interesting :-)

;-)

le blog de Billaut  : http://billaut.typepad.com/

(oops sorry, wrong window, please ignore my last post)

did you solve the center/right adjustment problem?

R2 kerning issue with Draw that you were talking about ?

yes

It's out of my scope currently, I didn't yet worked on the (cross-platform) 
preview window (where Draw engine will be used).

ok

If Draw has really some issue with kerning, I can't see how we can 
fix that in R2. We'll have to live with an almost-WYSIWYG model. 
If R2 was open-sourced, that would be, of course, different. ;-)

... or ... we can ask Cyphre to fix it? :-)

Sure, if he has access to that part of the source code. Henrik, did 
you made a RAMBO ticket for that issue ?

no, I stopped spending time on it almost immediately after learning 
of this problem.

the idea was to use size-text to produce the needed position, but 
the result is not usable, because I don't think DRAW uses the concept 
of a bounding box for text.

Update on the work-in-progress : http://softinnov.org/tmp/test-page.zip


Both files are printed from the same Draw dialect source, using my 
printer:// scheme. The PDF file is printed through Bullzip PDF Virtual 
printer. The PS file is directly generated by the printer scheme 
(for UNIX/Cups direct printing).


Most of the PostScript support is done (see %test-page.ps), but there's 
still a lot of details to enhance/fix/add: 

o Add center/right alignement support

o Add underline style for fonts

o Fine-tune positionning and bold level.

o Fix minor differences with the GDI version.

To view the PS file, use ghostscript / gsview.

Scaling, auto-fit are also currently missing in the PS version. Landscape 
mode is also missing in both GDI and PS modes.

don't bother with underline style!  It's a relic of type setting.

There are a few good justifications schemes available for postscript

I found a justification routine (doing also alignement). I need to 
study it to see if it fit my needs : align and line-wrap at the same 
time.

word wrap or line wrap?

line wrap

there's also a very nice bar code generator for postscript.

That shouldn't be hard to code in PS. Anyway, now I just need to 
code it in Draw, and let the printer:// scheme do the work.

Btw, I need to make a bar code generator for my current project, 
so that's something I'll work on soon.

(only EAN 13 support)

http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/is the one I use ....

Nice library, thanks for the link.

I wrote a simple one that is available through rebol.org.

called ean13.r.. although I don't remember if that specific one has 
PS support.

Thanks Henrik, I'll study your code too.

Did anyone experimented with the printer:// scheme on Windows ? Any 
feedback ?

I'm about to release a new version of the printer lib with multiplatform 
support, so if anyone noticed something to fix or improve that I'm 
not aware of, that's the right time to report ;-).

I hoped to have time Doc, but I don't have a need, and I seem to 
have *no* spare time for playing right now. :-(

I've been pretty flat out as well, but will have a ook at it today. 
 Thanks for the work.

First issue .. the text box displays fine in the PDF, but when I 
print it

write printer:// demo-doc


the lower text box margin cuts into the bottom line of text so that 
only the top half of that line prints.

This is the same for all of the three lower text boxes

It happens here too,  I need to apply global scaling to text fonts 
too.

and not use pair! for specifying X Y scaling values but decimal! 
values.

So, this implementation is as a page description language?

you use commands like 'start-page/end-page to control paging and 
'insert port [...draw dialect...] to draw content.

'end-page might be buggy in your version.

Does text flow from one page to another?

Nope, that's too high-level, it's not a feature of Draw dialect. 
The printer scheme provides a cross-platform low-level layer to build 
such higher-level frameworks.

So, how are you doing it ? multiple pages and text flow?

Making text flow from one page to another is a job for a word-processor 
like MSWord or LaTeX. The printer scheme aims to be general purpose, 
so it can be used to print anything (not only output from word-processors).