Re: Reporting Module - Part 1

["Adam \"Tauvix\" Debus" <northstar@delsol.net>]

Hi,

    You are correct, every system with a browser can read HTML. The problem
is because it's an interpreted "language" it doesn't always look the same.
When we are talking about reports that are, most likely, going to be shown
to someone in Management, to describe why we now need to go spend another
$2500+ a year on IP space...Looking good printed, or at least the same every
time, is going to be a bonus. And as we all know no browser displays web
pages the same as any other. Not even between versions of the same broswer.
Adobe supplies Acrobat Reader for 23 different Operating Systems at this
exact moment in time, including Linux and Solaris. I'm not sold on PDF
format, but it's the only one that I can think of that is going to look the
same no matter what browser/OS you are using that I can think of. Not only
that but nearly everyone in corporate america has a copy of some PDF reader
installed, Adobe's or not. No, PDF/Adobe isn't open source, but it is a
defacto standard.

    Again, I can only lay claim to experiences that I've had, yours may be
completely different. I have exactly 3 lines of code writen so far. I'm
willing to change plans for what the majority favours. :)

Thanks,

Adam
----- Original Message -----
From: "Simon White" <simon@mtds.com>
To: "Adam "Tauvix" Debus" <northstar@delsol.net>
Cc: <northstar-devel@brownkid.net>
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 8:06 PM
Subject: Re: Reporting Module - Part 1


> On Fri, 17 May 2002, Adam  "Tauvix" Debus wrote:
>
> >     Now, initailly these are going to be reports in HTML, but eventually
I
> > want to have it create in PDF format or some other easially exportable,
and
> > more importantly, printable format. I favour PDF because every operating
> > system can read it. Also graph generation for things like number of
> > allocations in a month, or a month-to-month chart of  % utilization. I'd
> > certianly be interested in trends. Which means we are probably looking
at a
> > month report autogenerator as well as on demand report generation. Also
a
> > new database table to store the monthly reports.
>
> Hi all,
>
> It's late and all, but I have to pick you up on this. More systems can
> read HTML than PDF. That said, it's fairly simple to create PDF directly
> from HTML but that doesn't help the usual crappy page layout that happens
> because paragraphs don't always wrap nicely onto the next page, etc, but I
> believe that a program called html2pdf exists. Should be easy to
> integrate.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Simon White
> Internet Services Manager
> MTDS Morocco
>
>