[reportlab-users] Am I allowed to implement feature like pageCatcher.copyPages in ReportLab Toolkit ?

[Andy Robinson]

2008/10/4 KLEIN Stéphane <stephane at harobed.org>:

> Hi

>

> I look for implement a feature like pageCatcher.copyPages in ReportLab

> library. I wonder if it's forbidden ? Why this question ? because this

> feature conflict with commercial PageCatcher feature.


It's not "forbidden".  Our library is open source and you can make any
changes to it that you want, for yourself.

When we first started out, parsing PDF was very hard work and we
didn't want to make it too easy for (commercial) competitors, so we
made this feature as closed-source code.  Now that PDF-parsing code is
reasonably available (e.g. in pyPDF), there is no longer any 'secret'.

With very limited time ourselves, and because we already have this
capability within our own product suite, ReportLab employees can't
spend weeks helping to write such a feature.  But if someone (you?)
contributed a well thought-out and integrated and correct set of
extensions to our library to parse PDFs, we'd certainly consider
accepting it and we'd help check things and make suggestions.



Best Regards,


-- 
Andy Robinson
CEO/Chief Architect
ReportLab Europe Ltd.
165 The Broadway, Wimbledon, London SW19 1NE, UK
Tel +44-20-8544-8049