[reportlab-users] reST and PDF using Reportlab

[Andy Robinson]

Thanks for letting us know!  Email me privately about the 
scope of your plans and we'll sort something out with CVS.


Actually, we're REALLY keen
to push docutils to the point where it can do long
documents such as user guides - it's just that our
time is fully allocated this quarter.  I started to
converse with David Goodger on this recently too. I 
suggest you email me privately and maybe we can harmonize 
the efforts. 

If we reached a point where we could do Python PEPs in
PDF, and thus write our own tech-notes and procedure documents,
I think I'd decree it the 'reportlab documentation standard'
and we'd port all our manuals to reST / docutils-xml.

On paragraphs: the plan was always to supercede the two 
implementations with one, which is a lot more O-O and open to 
extending, subclassing and so on.  However, we got to a position 
where nothing was actually broken for us and therefore did not
move on with it.  I would welcome cleanup and commenting
of the new para.py as a first step, but I think a genuine
rethink is needed.  We had a big patch from Ury Harshak
on right-to-left text which we could not accomodate
because our paragraphs are not currently "pluggable" enough.

To really improve paragraphs to do what I think docutils
need, my feeling is that we ought to 
(a) make some "sandbox" area so that more people can
contribute new implementations, and be a lot freer
with CVS access here
(b) define a rigorous test suite for what paragraphs
are supposed to do (including speed benchmarks as well
as assertions about how they come out)
(c) identify the missing features in the container
and layout algorithm.  Typically, this might be extra
flowables, or properties thereof, which give guidance
to the frame or layout algoruthm. For example, nested lists
could be done easily by having an 'indent' and 'dedent'
instruction which told the frame to reserve space on
the left and right.  

Best Regards,

Andy Robinson


> -----Original Message-----
> From: reportlab-users-admin@reportlab.com
> [mailto:reportlab-users-admin@reportlab.com]On Behalf Of Sidnei da Silva
> Sent: 30 April 2003 20:27
> To: reportlab-users@reportlab.com
> Subject: [reportlab-users] reST and PDF using Reportlab
> 
> 
> Howdy,
> 
> Just so you guys know (and if someone is interested), im working on a 
> PDF Writer for docutils using Reportlab. There was some previous work 
> being done on this, but the developer gave up and wrote a Latex Writer 
> instead ;P
> 
> One of the first things I noticed is that theres a new para.py module in 
> the 1.17 version, and it does implement many things that were lacking on 
> the 1.15 version (which is the latest debian package). However, the code 
> would benefit from some cleanup. There are lots of commented out code, 
> methods without spacing, etc. My question is: how can I get access to 
> CVS and contribute?
> 
> ~dc
> 
> 
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