Testing Advogato after its life was extended recently.

Got an article about using xtopdf, my open source PDF creation/conversion toolkit, published by Packt Publishing of the UK.

Its here.

This article shows how to use the features in xtopdf v1.3 and v1.0 to convert multiple different input formats to PDF: text, DBF, CSV, TDV and XLS.

Also, I've started a products page on my site - only xtopdf there now, but will be updating it with more products over time.

Vasudev.

ANN: xtopdf: PDF creation / conversion toolkit: alpha release of v1.3 (convert CSV, TDV, XLS to PDF)

Hey,

This is actually a somewhat preliminary announcement, but may be of interest to developers / users who know Python and/or have earlier checked out my xtopdf PDF creation / conversion toolkit http://sourceforge.net/projects/xtopdf ):

I've released (via my own web site, not yet properly packaged/documented and put on the SourceForge site, that will be done in some days), the next version of xtopdf: v1.3. This version adds support for conversion of CSV, TDV (Tab Delimited Values) and XLS (limited support) to PDF. v1.3 also adds some GUI tools written using wxPython (v1.0 had only command-line tools and a library for developers).

Users/developers will need to install wxPython and properly configure it to work with their Python installation before they can use these GUI tools. This is fairly straightforward on Windows using the .MSI or .EXE (can't remember which it is right now) installer for wxPython, but on Linux, you'll need to know how to handle the tools that are used to build packages from source code, i.e. make, configure, etc. Also, wxPython is a medium-sized package - it took around an hour or two to fully build on my reasonably fast PC. So be patient (get yourself a coffee or two, or do something else in another Linux console / window while wxPython builds :-)

Those who know even basic Python should be able to install and run both xtopdf v1.0 and the new stuff in v1.3, at least for the command-line tools (the programs are quite simple).

Main SourceForge site for xtopdf v1.0: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xtopdf

URL for xtopdf v1.3 on my web site:

http://www.dancingbison.com/xtopdf-1.3.zip

URL for xtopdf v1.0 on my web site: http://www.dancingbison.com/xtopdf-1.0.tar.gz

wxPython site: http://wxpython.org

xtopdf requires both Python and the open source version of the ReportLab toolkit.

Python site: http://www.python.org xtopdf needs Python v2.2 or higher.

ReportLab site: http://www.reportlab.org

xtopdf was developed using ReportLab v1.17, should work with all v1.x, may or may not work (not tested yet) with v2.x.

More details (for Windows) are available in a guide here:
http://itext.ugent.be/library/question.php?id=41

I'd appreciate any feedback, about bugs (v1.3 is tested but not a lot yet, that will be done in next some days), or how / what for anyone is using it.

Apart from the "proper" packaging/documenting and upload to SourceForge (and my web site), I shall be writing and posting more about how to use it, etc. in the coming days.

Enjoy, and Thanks
Vasudev


===========================
Vasudev Ram
Software consulting and training
http://www.dancingbison.com
===========================

Blogged about how ODBC database content can be easily published as PDF, using my xtopdf PDF conversion toolkit.

The posts is here (2nd post on this page) and here.

Updated my Advogato account settings to reflect my business web site.

Updated my Advogato account settings to show my business web site.