I have recently attempted to generate reports in Silverlight 4. In my problem domain, these reports either need to go directly to the printer and/or the client-side SL application creates a PDF and allows the user to store it somewhere.
As for the report, it's roughly composed of 50% flow text (incl. enumerations), 30% tables and 20% charts. The flow text part makes it slighty more challenging, as proper line breaking would have to take place.
So far, I have tried the following approaches - each with its own shortcomings that make them not so much feasible:
Silverlight's own PrintDocument: technically, there are two major concerns. For one, getting page breaks to work and printing UIElements on it with proper layout is a bit of a dirty hackjob and full of compromises; thankfully that's the part I've managed to get working so far. However, the PrintDocument class always renders all visuals as bitmaps before sending them off; this is not so much fun, if one uses a PDF printer and hopes to still be able to search in / select text. David Poll's approach in "Silverlight and Beyond" [1] wasn't that helpful as well as it inherently follows the same approach and thus suffers from very similar issues.
silverPDF [2]: a barely documented library that requires to do most of the layout manually (the former approach at least allowed me to re-use Silverlight's layouting engine). So far, I see no way to (for instance) measure paragraphs and the only sample with long flowtext uses hardcoded absolute values for layout rectangles. Also, the developing party seems to be inactive.
Personally, I'm now thinking of following an entirely different strategy: simply generate HTML documents. But I was hoping that the community here might have hints for the two approaches above or know other good approaches.
Thanks in advance,
~Manny
Do you need to generate the report on the client, or can you get the server to generate it? Your options are better if you can generate it on the server. Personally, I think the way Silverlight printing works at the moment is pretty poor for report usage (sending each page to the printer as raster rather than vector, resulting in potentially huge amounts of data travelling through the network, and lower printing quality output). I've found the best strategy is to generate the PDF on the server (enabling you to take advantage of a reporting engine), and display it in your application. There are also a few commercial products (such as Telerik's Silverlight Report Viewer, Report Sharp Shooter, or even First Floor Software's Document Toolkit). If a client side solution is really required, perhaps one of these might be the best option (although the printing quality will still be poor). Note that Silverlight 5 is supposed to have support for vector printing, but it's another 6 months or more away from release. Yet another option is Pete Brown and David Poll's open source reporting framework here: http://silverlightreporting.codeplex.com/.
If you want to take the option of generating the report on the server as a PDF and displaying it in your application, I've written an article on doing so here: http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/Building-a-Silverlight-Line-Of-Business-Application-Part-6.aspx. This doesn't work for OOB applications, but the source code accompanying my book (Pro Business Applications with Silverlight 4) does: apress.com/book/view/9781430272076.
Hope this helps...
Chris Anderson
Related
I am trying to formulate a proposal for an application that allows a user to print a batch of documents based on data stored in a SQL table. The SQL table indicates which documents are due and also contains all demographic information. This is outside of what I normally do and am trying to see if these is a platform/application that already exists to do such a task
For example
List of all documents: Document #1 - Document #10
Person 1 is due for document #: 1,5,7,8
Person 2 is due for document #: 2.6
Person 3 is due for document #: 7,8,10
etc
Ideally, what I would like is for the user to be able to push a button and get a printed stack of documents that have been customized for each user including basic demographic info like name, DOB, etc
Like i said at the top, I already have all of the needed information in a database, I am just trying to figure out the best approach to move that information onto a document
I have done some research and found some people have used mail merge in Word or using Access as a front end but I don't know if this is the best way. I've also found this document. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
If I understand your problem correctly, your problem is two-fold: Firstly, you need to find a way to generated documents based on data (mail-merge) and secondly, you might need to print them two.
For document generation you have two basic approaches: template-based and programmatically from scratch. I suppose that you will opt for a template based approach which basically means that you design (in MS Word) a template document (Word, RTF, ...) that acts as a template and contains placeholders and other tags that designate »dynamic« parts of the document. Then, at document generation time, you need a .NET library/processor that you will pass this template document and the data, where the processor will populate the template with the data and return the resulting document.
One way to achieve this functionality would be employing MS Words' native mail-merge, but you should know that this would involve using Office COM and Word Application Automation which should be avoided almost always.
Another option is to build such a system on top of Open XML SDK. This is velid option, but it will be a pretty demanding task and will most probably cost you much more than buying a commercial .NET library that does mail-merge out-of-the-box – been there, done that. But of course, the good side here is that you will be able to tailer the solution to your needs. If you go down this road I recoment that you use Content Controls for tagging documents/templates. The solution with CCs will be much easier to implement than the solution with bookmarks.
I'm not very familliar with the open source solutions and I'm not sury how many there are that can do mail-merge. One I know is FlexDoc (on CodePlex) but its problem is that uses a construct (XmlControl) for tagging that is depricated in Word 2010+.
Then there are commercial solutions. Again I don't know them in detail but I know that the majority of them are a general purpose document processing libraries. Our company has been using this document generation toolkit for some time now and I can say it covers all our »template-based document generation« needs. It doesn't require MS Word at doc generation time, and has really helpful add-in for MS word and you only need several lines of code to integrate it in your project. Templating is very powerful and you can set-up a template in a very short time. While templates are Word documents, you can generate PDF or XPS docs as well. XPS is useful because you can use .NET/WPF prining framework that works with XPS docs to print documents. This is a very high-end solution, but of course, the downside here is that it is not a free solution.
I have implemented a report in standard WPF controls and have also implemented a DocumentPaginator to take these controls and convert them into a document for printing.
I have also implemented some code which uses the document paginator to render the pages to images and write them out to a PDF using PDFSharp, however this does not allow for copying and pasting, also the image quality is questionable.
I have experimented with the GhostXPS utility and was thinking of using it by saving out to an XPS document and then using GhostXPS to convert it to a PDF, this was promising, however the current version contains a bug that renders data copied from the generated PDF useless...
So I thought I would ask here to try and find a efficient method for doing this, Can someone please suggest a good way to take a DocumentPaginator and either save it directly out to a PDF, with copy/paste functionality or convert it from an XPS document to a PDF with this functionality?
Thanks,
Alex.
EDIT - PDFSharp fix:
Ok as requested here is what I did to compile the fix for the PDFSharp 1.31 XPS converter:
1) I downloaded the source from here:
PDFSharp - SourceForge
2) I followed the instruction in this post:
PSFSharp Fix
XpsParser.ImageBrush.cs (ln 22, added): brush.Opacity = 1;
PdfContentWriter.cs (ln 526, changed): if (opacity <= 1)
3) Then just compile the source, first open the 'PdfSharp-WPF.csproj' and build that, then open the 'PdfSharp.Xps.csproj' and build it as well, the relevent libraries are 'PdfSharp-WPF.dll' and 'PdfSharp.Xps.dll'
Note upon trying to build the source you will likely receive a few errors depending on which version of .NET you are targeting, these are simple to fix if you just read the error messages.
EDIT(2): NJones created a blog post with more details on the PdfSharp fix: Output to PDF in WPF
There is an XPS Converter that was included with PDFsharp 1.31. It's a beta version, but AFAIK it supports nearly everything and may work for your needs.
PDFsharp 1.31 can be downloaded from SourceForge or CodePlex.
If a commercial SDK would be an option, there is one company I came across that has a professional XPS to PDF conversion option (and more).
http://www.nixps.com
Warning: I'm not affiliated with this company nor have I tried their products. I have on the other hand heard good things about them.
I use Telerik Reporting which handles document pagination and allows you to create reports in a designer similar to creating a GUI. I decided to just buy a 3rd party product because I didn't want to spend development time writing my own paginator, etc. Also, this tool is probably more bug proof then a custom solution and allows a lot of flexibility for how you want to design your printout/report. In the future if you have more complicated printing or reports required, this tool does a lot more. I do not work for Telerik, but there product is good.
It allows exporting to PDF, Word, Excel, HTML, PowerPoint, PNG, etc. etc.
IMHO, you've got the right idea: XPS is, in my mind, the simplest method of serializing the data into a usable format, especially for conversion.
As for a third party tool, I've a peer (as in, not myself,)who's used CheckPrixa with some measure of success; it's freeware and it offers command line conversions. (i.e. serializing a document and converting a la generated .bat file.)
It also allows you to handle keywords, titles, etc. along with more important items like even pagination.
As far as I'm aware, there are no known discrepancies.
Alternatively, if converting the MSXPS is what's giving you headaches, you might want to look at XpsConverter, it converts MSXPS to OpenXPS, and as a Window's driver, it's available on any machine using .NET 3 and above.
Keep us updated with whatever solution you try, virtual reports are a growing deal.
I've been asked to create a stand-alone site/app that's not connected to the web (all on a local server).
One part of it is to have a map of a natural reserve with a bunch of links that will show footpaths, different animals habitat areas, visitor centres and such.
So there's a map (static picture) and when you click on it some overlay goes on top of it.
At least that's the way I see it now.
I've looked here: http://www.carto.net/williams/yosemite/ but it just looks mucho ugly.
Getting Maps Premium is not an option as it's not that cheap. And the reason they don't want to use Maps/Earth free API is because internet connection is still very slow there (sattelite internet only and when optic cable will be hooked up nobody knows).
Looking for some recommendations as to how to proceed there. Drawing paths/areas on the picture of the maps seems extremely insufficient and time consuming.
I'd need some way to use coordinates to automatically draw areas and lines over the map (and then somehow export that as a graphis file (or SVG) that'll be layered on top of original map simply using ajax.
Will ARCGIS pro edition be the way to go or should I start learning SVG. Do you know some good SVG books/tutorials (as related to mapping)? Maybe there's some other way around altogether...
They do have detailed maps of the area in ARCGIS (whatever format they are in I don't know yet).
Just looking for some ideas, any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Do you know GeoServer? More or less all-in-one, compatible with different types of datasets, widely customisable.
Starting from "raw" SVG and write the whole thing yourself will probably be prohibitively time consuming.
If you have very little data (say less than 50 geometries) that is fixed, you could also use OpenLayers without any backend server.
For the data you could use a OpenLayers.Layer.Image if your (overlay-) map consists of a small raster image. For vector data, you can use OpenLayers.Layer.Text or a OpenLayers.Layer.Vecor together with protocols OpenLayers.Layer.KML or .JSON.
You can click through the current release examples.
I admit that this is not an easy task for a beginner, but it's fun hacking the maps together.
What are my options for printing in Silverlight 3? Assume I have this awesome Silverlight application/control that creates a graphical display of some data. Now the user wants to print it.
I have considered a few options but I have yet to test any of these. Before I do that I would like to get some feedback on how it can be done.
Use the browser printing capabilites. In my experience this is does not provide a useful print, but perhaps with some interaction between the Silverlight host and the browser it can be done?
Use WriteableBitmap. The image can either be written locally, but this requires interaction from the user, or sent to the server where a suitable file (e.g. PDF file) can be generated and then sent back to the browser. Unfortunately you now get the overhead of sending the image twice across the network and increased complexity on the server side.
Send XAML back to the server that is then rendered in a WPF application running on the server. The result is the sent back to the client. I'm not sure if this is possible at all however, but if it is the network overhead is less than in option 2. Unfortunately, the complexity on the server side is even higher.
Wait for Silverlight 4?
One thing I have considered is that my awesome control probably will have a ScrollViewer at the highest level, but the user will want to print the entire content of the control, not just whatever is visible inside the bounds of the ScrollViewer. How can I handle this added complexity?
In all seriousness, I think your best option is to wait until Silverlight 4 if your client can wait that long. I've seen a good bit of buzz about SL 4 supporting printing on twitter, though it's not official. I'd wait until PDC in a few weeks and see if any Silverlight bits trickle out to support printing.
Take a look at SmartPrint for Silverlight 3: http://www.smartwebcontrols.com/SmartPrintDetails.aspx
TBH I wouldn't use any of those options:-
Printing from the browser. Fine if you are printing say a chart or something else that scales well on a single sheet of paper. Rubbish for anything else especially where you have scrolled content.
WriteableBitmap. I can't see a client-side only solution being acceptable to the user "Please save this and then print it" message. It could be made to work bouncing off the server but would be bad for bandwidth use (bandwidth is import right? because in a well-connect intranet you wouldn't using Silverlight?).
Sending XAML to server for rendering. Really awkward it would be WPF XAML not SL XAML, where and how would you do the binding, why send XAML at all, since the server needs to be pretty much clued in on this so why can't it hold the XAML needed as well. Or were you thinking of sending just pure XAML with all the data needed? Still its a lot of plumbing needed in the SL that isn't actually related to SL.
Use Silverlight 4, its possible that in the not to distant future this would be the correct no-brainer choice (personally I wouldn't hold my breath) but right now SL4 doesn't exist.
A 5th option
Place report generating code on the server and have the Silverlight app inform the server of the data set required (not necessarily posting the data merely the criteria needed to access the correct set). In my experience direct prints of GUIs aren't particularly satisfactory when the user really needs a good printed form of the data.
Its true that at times the user just wants to quickly get some offline access to a grid of data as it looks there and then. In that situation users often find an export to spreadsheet compatible file preferable to printing, which would be possible from SL.
Something akin to number two is pretty much your best bet and is what I've seen done for printing in most Silverlight apps so far.
You can have the app send content for printing back to the web server (i.e. a new handler or query string parameters to a printing page) and pop up another page for the user to print web content from, or you could allow the user to download a file and have them print that.
Sliverlight 3 does not support printing.
If you can wait for silverlight 4, they have given it "high priority"
If not use Writeablebitmap: http://www.andybeaulieu.com/Home/tabid/67/EntryID/161/Default.aspx
I'm communicating with a logic analyzer (HP 1660A) over RS232. I issue a command which tells the analyzer to print screen its display and send it over to the controller (my pc) through serial communication. I'm saving the result (which is usually abut 25kB) to my computer and I would like to view it as a TIFF or other format. The problem is that the response from the analyzer comes in PCL format, therefore suitable to be sent to a printer and printed directly, but not to be opened as an image. I have tried a few PCL to image converters to do the job, I found one which does it properly, however I've used the trial version and I am reluctant to purchase it. I've given you the background of my labour. I would appreciate any kind of help, a reference to the commands in pcl 1 and what should I do in order to extract the data and format it properly from the PCL file. I have no experience with PCL and image processing whatsoever, so please, give me a hand here. Thank you.
P.S. I've obtained the PCL file from the analyzer, both in C# and matlab... I have one slight problem in C# with the serial port control, some images have some uninterpreted characters in the image, when using the above converters. I say all these because I need an algorithm or some indications, no matter the programming language, so please feel free to post.
PCL is complex to read. There are only a handful of tools out there that do a good job of this. We have lots of PCL expertise and still often look to other to supply conversion to PDF and other formats. If the PCL is quite simple, that is, just text, a few fonts, and a graphic or two, a couple of RegEx commands could deal with the extraction of the text and then you could mock up a new document using whatever tools you wish.
Looking at these files in stackoverflow might be tough. If you can get them on an ftp and post a link I can take a quick look and post my findings/thoughts here. The other option is to look to an outside tool. There are a few we've had success with. Our needs are broad so I've settled on one that works the best with many different PCL streams (some PCL coding is better than others). As you are dealing with a known quantity of PCL you may have a few options. Here are a few we've used and had some success with (in order of usefulness to us)
PCLWorks by PageTech (they have a GUI viewer and complete SDK)
VeryPDF PCL Converter (command line tool)
SwiftView
There are others, and even an opensource variant of Ghostscript that handles PCL (we've never had much luck as the PCL we use often contains very custom fonts, symbol sets, and tons of macros which seem to choke it.
GhostPCL
EDIT: Most recently we've been working with LincPDF (http://www.lincolnco.com/). This is also an excellent product with has one big benefit, deployment is simple. Some of the other tools have complex software installations. This solution is very easy for us to deploy as a feature in an application. It's also faster then any tools we've tested to date (at least with the PCL that we generate from our apps which is quite complex as they include specialized fonts and macros).
According to the spec sheet for the HP 1660 (pdf) series can send the TIFF,PCX and postscript.
Wouldn't it be easier to use TIFF?
The project was put on hold for a while, but I would like to offer a complete and usable solution.
#Adrian
You can save the image to a floppy disk, I've done that, saved it as TIFF and everything worked fine. Unfortunately, it sends only PCL through RS232. The idea to save the print screen over serial communication was to avoid using too much the floppy disk, which the device uses in order to boot.
#Douglas
Thank you for your elaborate answer. I'll take a look at the indicated tools, however, my desire is to offer a complete front-end solution, which yields directly the graphic. I've put some files from my tests here in order to see the complexity of the PCL constructions. Do you have any knowledge of a possible API that I could integrate into my application, which can parse the file and interpret the PCL?
Regards,
Cosmin
We capture the serial input via a serial spooler that watches COM1:. It's called SSpool.exe. It redirects the PCL as input to PCLXForm. PCLXForm converts it into any raster format (TIFF, JPG, PDF, BMP, etc.) However, we can also extract the text during the conversion and we can extract individual raster objects from the PCL for re-arrangement in the downstream application. Our pricing model is positioned for licensee's that need to convert up to 50,000 pages of invoices into indexed PDF's per month. However, this type of application normally requires a custom license in order to get our pricing down to the level required. In order to do so, we often have to restrict our product to convert unlimited files, but only up to the 20th page within any one PCL print file. That provides enough page volume and gives us the ability to reduce the pricing per unit. To demo, you would need the PCLTool SDK.