[reportlab-users] External hyperlinks in SVG output

[Peter]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 5:29 PM, Andy Robinson <andy at reportlab.com> wrote:

>

> 2009/3/18 Peter <peter at maubp.freeserve.co.uk>:

>> Would the current trunk be used for the next ReportLab 2.3 release

>> (i.e. 2.3.1), or will I have to wait until ReportLab 2.4 before these

>> SVG link features are officially available?

>

> We don't usually do intermediate releases (2.3.1, 2.3.2) unless (a)

> people scream for one loud enough, or (b) we have a serious bug which

> needs fixing.    Neither has happened at this moment and this is new

> functionality, so I'd be inclined to call our next release "2.4" -

> whenever we do one.


OK, that makes sense.  Thanks for clarifying your policy.


> I have not followed the SVG work closely.  Is the new feature doing

> what you need? Also, do you need a release version soon for some

> reason (e.g. someone has a policy only to use released versions), and

> if so by when do you need it?     We are very busy with

> end-of-financial-year projects but could potentially do a release in

> April.


For our own in house use, I'm happy to use a locally patched or SVN
copy of reportlab, and have been using both PNG+ImageMap and SVG
output successfully on an internal web project.  I don't see a new
release of ReportLab as urgent, but rather nice to have, especially if
I want to release some of this code publicly.  So don't rush a release
just on my account.

On a related topic, would you be interested in an HTML image map
renderer in ReportLab?  This would return a fragment of HTML for using
in combination with a PNG or other bitmap from renderPM as part of a
webpage, both drawn from the same ReportLab object.  I have something
working (links for basic shapes like rectangles, polygons, circles),
but there are still some rough edges and missing features (e.g. no
links on string objects).

It would be nice to have some basic URL support in PDF output, even
just for plain (non rotated) rectangles would be useful to me - these
could also be used in bar charts etc.  I guess you guys have more
pressing tasks right now though, and I don't know enough about PDF
files and how ReportLab generates them to attempt this (even if I
could justify the time).

Regards,

Peter