[reportlab-users] ReportLab vs LaTex

[Klaas Freitag]

Am Donnerstag, 28. Dezember 2006 18:38 schrieb Tim Roberts:

> Each one has its place.  If I were writing a book or a research paper,

> I'd use LaTeX.  If I were creating a registration form or an inventory

> report, I'd use ReportLab.

What would you recommend for a invoice or offer document?

I ended up to use ReportLab & trml2pdf because of
- little dependencies. Reportlab is 'just' a lib for the python 
  system of the installed system while LaTeX brings a huge bunch 
  of software.
- good control of layout and appearence- already mentioned
- I was thinking that ReportLabs generated PDF is more "nice" than 
  the PDF generated as outcome of the LaTeX toolchain. I wonder if 
  you share that experience?

However there are always downsides. For example I haven't found 
out yet how I get a printed carryover (not sure if the term is 
correct, hard to find out for non native speaker, german is 
'Übertragssumme') from one page to another like this:

...
5.  bla bla 
    4 Pcs. a 50 $             200 $
                            -------
                   Page sum   200 $  ---------+
                                              |
============ snip: Next Page ===============  | goes here.
                                              |
                   Carryover: 200$   <--------+

6. Blub foo bar      
   1 Pcs. a 400 $             400$ 
                            ------
                        Total 600$

Thanks for any hints on that :-) I create a rml file with a home
grown template system and call trml2pdf.

Best regards,

Klaas