Creating hardcopy output

Anon

I am having a difficult time deciding how to create reports and push them to the users desktop. I am in the middle of developing a large browser based administration system, using PHP and Postgres. My only stumbling block is how to create and send invoices, purchase orders, shipping paperwork and various management reports to the users machine. I was going to use PDF format, but that looks labor intensive. The other option is to create the reports as an RTF file. Rich text is not much of an extension on simple text, so I wonder if anyone has considered this option? Browser printing an HTML based report doesn't seem to be viable, even with the page break control sytle sheets give.
I am sure that anyone building an actual application will this same requirement. All I have seen to date is the FreeMed project (from a report aspect), but I haven't had time to investigate their methods. Is there a template driven product anywhere? So far, this seems to be the only weak area for creating browser based business applications with PHP.
ALso, if there are any developers creating large scale business applications (i.e. not your usual interactive web sites) with PHP, I would like to hear from you. There may be an opportunity to share experience.

Thanks
Chris

Anon

Hi Chris,

I am a developer on the freemed project
ans was wondering how you made out with
the report thing

Thanx
Fred

Anon

Hi Fred.

I am just at the point where I require quality hardcopy. I have experimented with RTF (limited formatting but fairly easy to produce and by far the fastest) and PDF (excellent formatting but man, what a pain to learn - and slower - and with a few pdf bugs at the browser end). Then I looked at a commercial product that basically pushes an activex control to the browser. You imbed control tags in your page or streamed file and it formats and prints to the local printer. EASY to use, but only works with Exporer. I did find another product (will have to dig out URL, it's at work) that seems to be in widespread use by commercial web documentation firms. I believe this one installs a small windows app and then uses a specific mime type to associate the file with it. Works with all browsers and has highly advanced formatting capabilities. Only catch - it's a commercial product$$$$$
Producing our own printing application in something like Delphi may be the answer.
Oh yes, I did experiment with acrobat "forms". These are great for 1 page output as the form is like a template and you push the data in a separate dtf type file. Again - it doesn't handle multiple pages. I'm assuming you are looking for a template driven solution, like I am.
I am a little bit familiar with Freemed. I looked over the source code in order to learn php (I'm a JSP developer)!!!
The current version is well architected by developers who understand "command patterns". Most self taughts don't understand advanced architectural design...
Anyway, hope this helps. What options have you explored for Freemed so far?

Chris

Anon

Chris,

Thanx for info. I've pretty much tried all
the same things and came to the same conclusions.
decided that the freemed method was no better
or worse than the others.

Never thought I'd say this but I miss the cobol report writer!

Thanx again
Fred