[reportlab-users] Paragraph "Hack"

[Paul Barrass]

Hi List,

After years of trouble-free use of ReportLab, I've come across a couple 
of issues.

It appears that _rl_accel is no longer available as a "stand alone" 
download - the daily snapshot seems to be missing some setup files 
(setup.py being notable in it's absence).  Is this the case, or have I 
missed something?

I've upgraded to ReportLab 2.2, and I'm having visual problems with 
Paragraphs.  There is a border around the top of the text of the 
paragraph in earlier versions (I was previously using 2.1), which is not 
there in 2.2.  I'm using Paragraphs with background colours and the text 
is now touching the top of the box forming the background.  I know there 
is a 'borderWidth' attribute, but that gives an unsatisfactory result, 
as the border is added to all four sides to the Paragraph, meaning it 
becomes too wide and the border at the bottom is too large with any 
sensible leading.

Looking to the source, I've found that

                cur_y = self.height - f.fontSize
 
has become

                cur_y = self.height - getattr(f,'ascent',f.fontSize)    
#TODO fix XPreformatted to remove this hack

Reversing this change returns the Paragraph to it's old behaviour, but 
I'm not sure what it breaks in XPreformatted.

Has anybody else experienced this issue or know if my workaround won't 
lead to Bad Things happening?

Thanks,
Paul Barrass.