Re: Reporting Module - Part 1

[Simon White <simon@mtds.com>]

On Fri, 17 May 2002, Adam  "Tauvix" Debus wrote:

>     You are correct, every system with a browser can read HTML. The problem
> is because it's an interpreted "language" it doesn't always look the same.
> When we are talking about reports that are, most likely, going to be shown
> to someone in Management, to describe why we now need to go spend another
> $2500+ a year on IP space...Looking good printed, or at least the same every
> time, is going to be a bonus. And as we all know no browser displays web
> pages the same as any other. Not even between versions of the same broswer.
> Adobe supplies Acrobat Reader for 23 different Operating Systems at this
> exact moment in time, including Linux and Solaris. I'm not sold on PDF
> format, but it's the only one that I can think of that is going to look the
> same no matter what browser/OS you are using that I can think of. Not only
> that but nearly everyone in corporate america has a copy of some PDF reader
> installed, Adobe's or not. No, PDF/Adobe isn't open source, but it is a
> defacto standard.

You're right. But you need therefore to come up with a reporting in XML or
something rather than HTML to begin with, since converting to PDF from
HTML will be as bad as rendering on different browser flavours anyway.
However, html2pdf may at least give a standard format to the HTML
rendering which may make things easier.

-- 
Simon White