patrickbucher / reportlab-workshop

creating some PDFs

ReportLab PDF Toolkit

• Documentation
• Package (PyPi)

Site Configuration

• See reportlab/rl_settings.py for defaults and variables, which can be overwritten (e.g. by ~/.reportlab_settings or RL_* environment variables).
  • TTFSearchPath: directories queried for TTF files
  • showBoundary: draw boundary lines
  • pageCompression: compress PDF
  • trustedHosts: trusted image tag sources
  • trustedSchemes: trusted protocols (HTTPS?)
• See reportlab/lib/pagesizes.py for page sizes.

Graphics and Text with pdfgen

Source

• lowest level interface for PDF creation
• works on canvas, (0,0) coordinates at lower left corner of the page
  • unit: "point" (1/72 of an inch)
• see hello_world.py
  • Canvas constructor takes various arguments, e.g. pageCompression=1 (for production output)
• two kinds of commands: drawing or changing state (fill color, font type, ...)
• draw operations of the Canvas object
  • lines/shapes
    • line/lines
    • grid
    • bezier
    • arc
    • rect
    • ellipse
    • wedge
    • circle
    • roundRect
  • strings
    • drawString
    • drawRightString
    • drawCenteredString
  • text
    • beginText; drawText
  • path
    • drawPath
    • clipPath
• use PIL for images
  • Pillow (PIL fork)
  • drawImage
  • drawInlineImage (Bitmaps; inefficient)
• ending a page (starting a new one with the next drawing operation)
  • showPage
• fonts
  • setFont(name, size)
• geometry
  • setPageSize
• state
  • saveState: mark current state for later restoration
  • restoreState: restores the last saved state saved on the same page
• misc
  • setAuthor
  • addOutlineEntry
  • setTitle
  • setSubject
• text object
  • setTextOrigin
  • moveCursor
  • setFont
  • textOut
  • textLine

Platypus: Page Layout and Typography Using Scripts

Source

• paragraph styles
• page templates
• DocTemplates: outermost document container
  • contains 1+ PageTemplates: page layouts
    • contains 1+ Frames: regions of pages (text, graphics)
      • Flowables: text/graphic to be "flowed into" a frame