[reportlab-users] Possible String/Unicode bug in reportlab. Where do I report it?

[Henning von Bargen]

> From: Roberto Alsina <ralsina at netmanagers.com.ar>

> Subject: Re: [reportlab-users] Possible String/Unicode bug in

> 	reportlab.	Where do I report it?

> To: Support list for users of Reportlab software

> 	<reportlab-users at reportlab.com>

> Message-ID: <200906202001.39444.ralsina at netmanagers.com.ar>

> Content-Type: Text/Plain;  charset="utf-8"

> 

> On Saturday 20 June 2009 19:47:40 Chris Bergstresser wrote:

>> Hi all --

>>

>>   I just started using ReportLab (through the rst2pdf library) and so

>> I'm not entirely sure this isn't a problem with rst2pdf, but it

>> certainly looks like a ReportLab bug.  When it tries to draw tables, I

>> get a:

>>

>> ValueError: Unknown color u'black'

>>

>>   The last line of the stack is:

>>

>> File

>> "c:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\reportlab-2.3-py2.6-win32.egg\reportlab\pdfg

>> en\textobject.py", line 98, in setStrokeColor

>>  raise ValueError('Unknown color %r' % aColor)

>>

>>   ... and a brief check of the code reveals this check above it:

>>

>>    elif type(aColor) is StringType:

>>            self.setStrokeColor(toColor(aColor))

>>

>>  obviously, this fails because aColor is Unicode.  (For that matter,

>> toColor only accepts binary strings as well). I cannot, for the life

>> of me, fathom *why*.  At any rate, the fix is trivial, depending on

>> the desired behavior--since I don't understand the rationale for

>> refusing to accept Unicode in the first place, I'm hesitant to suggest

>> a specific fix.

> 

> Since I intend to keep supporting RL 2.3, could you post a simple test case in 

> rst2pdf's bug tracker? Maybe it *is* rst2pdf's fault, and if it isn't I need 

> to create a workaround anyway :-) 

> 


There has been a change in the RL trunk colors.py recently, adding 
support for unicode colors, but that doesn't fix the error.

The following additional little patch for reportlab/pdfgen/textobject.py 
makes rst2pdf-0.11 work with the RL trunk:

Index: textobject.py
===================================================================
--- textobject.py	(revision 3505)
+++ textobject.py	(working copy)
@@ -92,7 +92,7 @@
                  self.setStrokeColorCMYK(aColor[0], aColor[1], 
aColor[2], aColor[3])
              else:
                  raise ValueError('Unknown color %r' % aColor)
-        elif type(aColor) is StringType:
+        elif isinstance(aColor, basestring):
              self.setStrokeColor(toColor(aColor))
          else:
              raise ValueError('Unknown color %r' % aColor)

Henning