[reportlab-users] Is Reportlab Toolkit still live?

[Tim Roberts]

Nathan wrote:

> Hi, I'm new to the mailing list.

>

> Is Reportlab Toolkit still an active project?  The release notes list

> the last release as being in 2004, the downloads page has links to a

> release in 2007, and the link to the user's guide on the download page

> is simply broken.  The web page seems to have been mostly abandoned.

>

> http://www.reportlab.org/rsrc/userguide.pdf

>

> I'm just looking for a good pdf-generation solution that works with

> python, but I don't want to invest my time in reportlab if it has been

> abandoned.  Should I be looking elsewhere, or is reportlab worth

> looking into?

>   


I'm always amazed when I encounter this kind of sentiment, and it is 
very common in the open source world.  We rag on Microsoft for releasing 
new versions every year with a bazillion features that we'll never use, 
but when an open source product reaches a state of maturity, we start to 
complain about it being abandoned.

Reportlab serves a rather well-focused purpose: it allows Python 
programs to create PDF files.  Once a project has reached a point where 
it fulfills the purpose for which it was designed without major bugs, 
why should there continue to be 6 releases a year?  I, for one, don't 
want to see gratuitous revolutions in the APIs I rely on.

In summary, the ReportLab toolkit does its job very well.  The 
developers and maintainers are active on this mailing list, and will 
gladly answer technical questions.  Beyond that, I don't know what kind 
of development you would expect to see.

(By the way, the Reportlab toolkit is one version of a product that the 
Reportlab team sells commercially, so as long as the company is still in 
business, the open source version will continue to be supported.)

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