[reportlab-users] Getting started

[Justin Fagnani-Bell]

Hi,

I'm using Django for an invoicing system, and trying to use ReportLab  
to print out order and invoices, etc.

Right now I'm not using platypus, because most of the elements on an  
invoice are fixed position. I've run into a couple of issues where  
I'm not sure how to deal with them.

The first is with small fields of text the are supposed to wrap to  
two or three lines, like the street part of an address. Paragraph  
seems to be the only built-in object that does wrapping, but I need  
to make sure that it doesn't expand beyond two lines. I don't  
immediately se a way to do that.

The other issue is with the invoice line items. If there are too many  
to fit on a page, then I need to create a second page that's  
different that the first. I assume I'll need platypus for this, but  
will it automatically paginate for me, and how can I tell it how much  
space there is for line items on each page type? Basically the first  
page has a different header and footer than other pages.

I'm also interested in hearing if there is an easier approach than  
hand coding the layout in Python. I'd love to be able to design the  
form with an SVG aware vector program and then fill it out and render  
it to PDF with ReportLab. Is there any way to do such a thing? If I  
could even specify the layout in a declarative form, like XML, but  
hopefully a little nicer than XSL:FOP, and fill it out and render  
with ReportLab, that would be better.

Thanks for any advice,
   Justin