[reportlab-users] ReportLab and "compositing" features

Jon Bradley shiftedpixels at gmail.com
Thu Jul 12 14:16:22 EDT 2007


I've got a challenge to convert a project from FPDF (a PHP PDF
library) to Django and Python.

I figured here would be the best place to ask questions - since this
is the only PDF library I could locate (and was recommended from many
django sites).

We've got an interactive "business card" type building application
written in Flash (AS1 ... ugh - old code). I'm porting it to AS3 and
Flash CS3 (possibly Flex 2/3). The interface consists of a drag and
drop model for adding images, text, and other content (background
colors, etc). This is all the easy part, generally speaking.

Now, the PDF generation part I feel will be tricky. I'd like to know
if the following is possible:

1. A content area defined as a canvas (say, a business card size area)
2. This canvas area acts as a clipping area for it's content - so
that I can load and place images outside of the boundaries (so they
bleed in).
3. Duplicate multiple canvases so that I can fill a page up that will
match an avery template.

I've seen a ton of examples, and can see how to create the PDFs with
relative ease. The tricky part with this is that all the images (clip
art - eps, jpg, or png) and the text fields are layered on top of one
another (like a photoshop composite). On top of that, the fonts used
will need to be pretty dynamic, though I've read that's as simple as
modifying the fonts to work with reportlab.

Any thoughts?

best,

jon



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