[reportlab-users] outputting simple multi-page tabular grid of data

[Tim Roberts]

On Sun, 01 May 2005 09:48:55 -0400, Kevin Murphy <murphy2 at speakeasy.net>

>In the meantime, I'm using HTML, which somebody suggested. It works 
>quite well, actually.  The <thead> tag causes the header row or rows of 
>the table to be repeated on every page, and a few simple CSS hints can 
>be used to adjust column widths.  (In my output, all columns but the 
>rightmost one are minimum width, and the rightmost one takes up as much 
>space as possible).  The main problem is that CSS for print media isn't 
>well supported, and I'd rather not have to manually interact with a 
>browser in order to print.  I have to manually specify landscape in the 
>browser, because the @page {size:landscape} directive doesn't seem to 
>work in any browsers I've tried.  I would also prefer to directly 
>control the pager header and footer.
>  
>

EXACTLY.  I've said this before, but I never tire of hearing my own voice.

HTML with CSS is just this close (fingers pinched very close together) 
to being THE ultimate, generic, platform-independent reporting 
solution.  It is simple, flexible, easy to generate automatically, and 
extremely well understood.  With just a few extensions for page 
management and items like widows, it could replace Crystal Reports and 
even Acrobat in a heartbeat.

Of course, that isn't exactly the kind of thing the folks at ReportLab 
want to hear...

-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.