There are a couple good solutions to this:
- use PDFLib to generate printable format directly then pipe it directly
to the browser. There are PHPLib hooks in PHP and also a perl module
which hooks into it. You can even access it in Java via JNI calls.
- create HTML output, but pipe it to html2ps on the system, then pipe
that through ps2pdf, then pipe it back out to the browser. The nice
thing about this approach is that you don't have to write your own page
rendering routines, html2ps does it for you, and you just control it
with style-sheet directives.
In any event, reporting off a database from the browser does not have to
be clunky or unattractive, there's some very good tools available.
Vince Vielhaber wrote:
> Here's where the problem arises. You can create a really good looking
> invoice, in fact you can create a whole bunch of really good looking
> invoices. What you can't do with a web app is send a form feed to the
> printer! The only solution I've found so far is to create each invoice
> individually using javascript and each in their own window. Then you
> issue the print command to each window. Here's where another problem
> arises... Each print command also presents you with a print dialog, so
> if you have 100 invoices you have 100 windows and 100 print dialogs and
> you have to answer each dialog.
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| Paul Ramsey
| Refractions Research
| Email: pramsey@refractions.net
| Phone: (250) 885-0632
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