[reportlab-users] simultaneous output of pdf and bmp possible ?

[Sebastian Hilbert]

Hi !

We are using reportlab.pdfgen for medical forms in our free and open source 
medical practice software GNUmed. I started to read up and took a good look 
at the code. While at it some questions came to mind.

What we basically need for Germany and other countries with regards to forms
is ideally something like this. I know that it is not yet possible but I would 
appreciate your comments.

1.) cross platform operation, Linux, Mac, Windows. Possible as far as I can 
see since GNUmed is python, reportlab is python . We use wxpython for our gui

2.) at best we would appreciate true forms like adobe forms but their SDK is 
not cross platform and closed source. 

3.) reportlab can draw pretty much everything which is dots on a canvas. To 
make is a forms solution (might not be intended) apart from the implentation 
and keeping track of widget states (checkbox on/off) some sort of separation 
between content and layout/widgets would be needed

4.) I noticed svg output from reportlab. Googling around I found some 
information on svg and xforms as a means of active forms. Is there support 
for this and do you have any ideas if this is cross platform ?

5.) I noticed bitmap output from reportlab. Is it possible to output bitmap 
and pdf off the the same reportlab 'template' ? As far as I can see writing 
code for the pdfgen module is not identical to writing code for the 
svg/pdf/bitmap renderer ? Is that correct ?

Here is what I am tyring to solve. Draw and save a form as pdf 
but 'convert' /save as bitmap as well. This bitmap object could then be 
passed on to PIL for further manipulation or wxpython's printing framework 
for printing. That is crossplatform processing I am dreaming of.  

I hope someone is able to answer some of the questions.

-- 
Sebastian Hilbert 
Leipzig / Germany
[www.gnumed.de]  -> PGP welcome, HTML ->/dev/null