[reportlab-users] Large table cells

[Bogdan M. Maryniuck]

On Fri, Sep 10, 2004 at 07:58:05AM +0100, Andy Robinson wrote:
> We do support row and column spanning and use it all the time;
> what we don't support is intelligent 'line removal' around the
> spanned cells.  I should also point out that we had different
> design goals to HTML tables, one of which is speed on things
> like financial and database tables; the HTML table algorithm
> and CSS model for every edge of every cell is inherently slow.
> There is also a more serious problem:  paper doesn't have scrollbars.

I know this all, because I use it sometimes. But RL still have a problems with
cellspan: if you put Paragraph, it is semi-OK (line removal does not works at all),
but if you put a Table -- it does not fills spanned cell. Line removal could
be a shallow if I could fit a table and overpaint it with appropriate color...
 
> Maybe someone could pound on Dirk to contribute this as a change
> from pounding on me to release PageCatcher :-)

Well, this is not a problem to develope it from the scratch. I even have here
something like this. It concatenates PDF's and can put one PDF as background.
But does not supports encryption (I never need it). Yet I don't know well how
to remove similar font subsets to make result smaller, but to do it rather
hard enough... Better I sell to Dirk my stuff just half cheaper. :-)

> Which Java library does tables well enough?

Apache FOP?

> How about giving the group a time estimate?  I may be
> missing some critical insight, as I currently believe that
> a workable HTML-like table renderer meeting everyone's
> constraints would be at least several months' work...

I never say that this is easy. Agree. But nothing is impossible.

-- 
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Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign respect for technical incompetance.