I want to develop a web-to-print-solution for a large company. A web
application (ASP.NET or JSP) will display a form to be filled out by
the user. With the entered and some database-data a PDF should be
generated. There are simple but also complex templates, such as a
business card or a product package. Good typo-quality is important.

I thought Adobe Document Server with XSL-FO would be the best way but
the XSL-FO-Implementation of ADS is very disappointing. I tried
FrameMaker in combination with XSL-FO and ADS but FrameMaker seems to
be horrible and very limited concerning graphics. I tried
XSL-FO-Renderers like Antennahouse and RenderX but there you need
developers to do the final layout and things like color-profiles are
hardly implemented. I thought of Quark DDS with XPress-Templates but
there dynamics are very (too) limited. PDF Forms are a possibility but
they don't supply enough dynamics either, I need to be able to choose
colors, pictures and positions dynamically.

Do I miss something? Or do I underestimate some of these tools? How do
professionals do it? I know there are already solutions like this.

Please rescue me,

best regards,
Michael Huhn

mhuhn wrote:

> I want to develop a web-to-print-solution for a large company. A web
> application (ASP.NET or JSP) will display a form to be filled out by
> the user. With the entered and some database-data a PDF should be
> generated. There are simple but also complex templates, such as a
> business card or a product package. Good typo-quality is important.
> 
> I thought Adobe Document Server with XSL-FO would be the best way but
> the XSL-FO-Implementation of ADS is very disappointing. I tried
> FrameMaker in combination with XSL-FO and ADS but FrameMaker seems to
> be horrible and very limited concerning graphics. I tried
> XSL-FO-Renderers like Antennahouse and RenderX but there you need
> developers to do the final layout and things like color-profiles are
> hardly implemented. I thought of Quark DDS with XPress-Templates but
> there dynamics are very (too) limited. PDF Forms are a possibility but
> they don't supply enough dynamics either, I need to be able to choose
> colors, pictures and positions dynamically.
> 
> Do I miss something? Or do I underestimate some of these tools? How do
> professionals do it? I know there are already solutions like this.

Take a look at our PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS) which can
be used with .NET or JSP (as well as many other environments),
and allows you to populate PDF templates with arbitrary text,
graphics, or image data. It supports good typography and color
management. Check out the free evaluation version on our Web
site.

Thomas

_______________________________________________________________
Thomas Merz          tm@pdflib.com        http://www.pdflib.com
Personalize PDF: PDFlib Personalization Server and Block plugin
_______PDFlib - a library for generating PDF on the fly________

Hi Michael,

I saw your post.  For a very comprehensive commercial sollution, you may
want to consider my OctoTools software.  It's front end forms design
capability along with its dynamic mapping of text and images coluld make it
a very viable candidate for your requirements.  Please take a look at
www.octotools.com and be sure to check out the "befor" and "after" examples
in the Output Sample tab.  In addition, you will find a pretty throughough
but exhaustive PowerPoint selection with a number of examples as well. 
OctoTools is creating both PDF and print output for projects including
invoices, financial reports, ID cards and VDP (Variable Print Data) for
picking slips, shippers and order information.  If you would like to persue
this further, please e-mail me at larry"at"jbmsystems"dot"com or phone my HQ
in the Boston,MA area at (US) 978 535-7676.  Thank you for your
consideration and I hope this can be of assistance.

Larry T.

mhuhn wrote:
> I know there are already solutions like this.

http://www.lowagie.com/iText/

There are lots of tools that will help you fill in an existing form,
but I understand you need to generate different forms from scratch.
In that case, you might take a look at iText (it's free).
The main difference with XSL-FO is that you don't define complex
Formatting Objects, instead you will write (complex?) JAVA or .NET
code to position every AcroField on the page.
br,
Bruno

larrynospam@nospamjbmsystems.com wrote:

> Hi Michael,
> 
> I saw your post.  For a very comprehensive commercial sollution, you may
> want to consider my OctoTools software.  It's front end forms design
> capability along with its dynamic mapping of text and images coluld make
> it
> a very viable candidate for your requirements.  Please take a look at
> www.octotools.com and be sure to check out the "befor" and "after"
> examples
> in the Output Sample tab.  In addition, you will find a pretty throughough
> but exhaustive PowerPoint selection with a number of examples as well.
> OctoTools is creating both PDF and print output for projects including
> invoices, financial reports, ID cards and VDP (Variable Print Data) for
> picking slips, shippers and order information.  If you would like to
> persue this further, please e-mail me at larry"at"jbmsystems"dot"com or
> phone my HQ
> in the Boston,MA area at (US) 978 535-7676.  Thank you for your
> consideration and I hope this can be of assistance.

The open source alternative is LaTeX + GhostScript. It all comes standard 
on a Linux box, you can install it for Windows.

Simply: make your server-side scripts output a markedup temporary text 
file. Run LaTeX to make a temporary PostScript file and then run GS to make 
a PDF.

I have run it on intranet systems, excellent. Your scripts may need a 
little hardening for internet use, but not too much.

Eric

mhuhn wrote:
> I want to develop a web-to-print-solution for a large company. A web
> application (ASP.NET or JSP) will display a form to be filled out by
> the user. With the entered and some database-data a PDF should be
> generated. There are simple but also complex templates, such as a
> business card or a product package. Good typo-quality is important.

This is typically called "database publishing".

> I thought Adobe Document Server with XSL-FO would be the best way but
> the XSL-FO-Implementation of ADS is very disappointing. I tried
> FrameMaker in combination with XSL-FO and ADS but FrameMaker seems to
> be horrible and very limited concerning graphics. I tried
> XSL-FO-Renderers like Antennahouse and RenderX but there you need
> developers to do the final layout and things like color-profiles are
> hardly implemented. I thought of Quark DDS with XPress-Templates but
> there dynamics are very (too) limited. PDF Forms are a possibility but
> they don't supply enough dynamics either, I need to be able to choose
> colors, pictures and positions dynamically.
> 
> Do I miss something? Or do I underestimate some of these tools? How do
> professionals do it? I know there are already solutions like this.

Here's my $0.02:

pdfTeX is a good choice for this type of work. It's a free, professional 
typesetter with full flexibility. A little of a raw diamond though, it 
will only show its full beauty when programmed by people with a deep 
understanding of their field.

A German company called Quinscape gave an excellent example what you can 
do with pdfTeX. They designed a product - DocScape - to generate a 
product catalog  as well a multitude of product sheets and related 
documents for ERCO lamps from a database, based on flexible templates:

Here's the catalog and all the other documents:
http://www.erco.com/en_index.htm?http://www.erco.com/download/en/en_index_download.htm

Here's a presentation about their workflow and some figures. Even though 
it's in German, which you may not understand, look through the whole 
presentation. They show how to set up grids and fill it with boxes, 
which is a typical DTP approach, just automated. By using a real 
typesetting program (TeX) complex flows are supported and automated or 
paramterized positioning and ordering of objects.

http://www.quinscape.de/qims/jsp/service/download/erco-docscape.pdf

Another TeX relative with particular strengths in the field of database 
publishing is ConTeXt.
http://www.pragma-ade.com/

Ralf

mhuhn wrote:
> I want to develop a web-to-print-solution for a large company. A web
> application (ASP.NET or JSP) will display a form to be filled out by
> the user. With the entered and some database-data a PDF should be
> generated. There are simple but also complex templates, such as a
> business card or a product package. Good typo-quality is important.
> 
> I thought Adobe Document Server with XSL-FO would be the best way but
> the XSL-FO-Implementation of ADS is very disappointing. I tried
> FrameMaker in combination with XSL-FO and ADS but FrameMaker seems to
> be horrible and very limited concerning graphics. I tried
> XSL-FO-Renderers like Antennahouse and RenderX but there you need
> developers to do the final layout and things like color-profiles are
> hardly implemented. I thought of Quark DDS with XPress-Templates but
> there dynamics are very (too) limited. PDF Forms are a possibility but
> they don't supply enough dynamics either, I need to be able to choose
> colors, pictures and positions dynamically.
> 
> Do I miss something? Or do I underestimate some of these tools? How do
> professionals do it? I know there are already solutions like this.
> 
> Please rescue me,
> 
> best regards,
> Michael Huhn
> 

You could try:

http://www.o2sol.com/pdf4net/products.htm

or

http://www.tallcomponents.com/

I wouldn't recommend XSL-FO...

Waldo

Ralf Koenig wrote:
>> I want to develop a web-to-print-solution for a large company. A web
>> application (ASP.NET or JSP) will display a form to be filled out by
>> the user. With the entered and some database-data a PDF should be
>> generated. There are simple but also complex templates, such as a
>> business card or a product package. Good typo-quality is important.
> 
> 
> This is typically called "database publishing".

Be careful with this term since it is a trademark of one
particular company.

>> Do I miss something? Or do I underestimate some of these tools? How do
>> professionals do it? I know there are already solutions like this.
> 
> 
> Here's my $0.02:
> 
> pdfTeX is a good choice for this type of work. It's a free, professional 
> typesetter with full flexibility. A little of a raw diamond though, it 
> will only show its full beauty when programmed by people with a deep 
> understanding of their field.

In which way does pdfTeX support ICC color profiles, which the original
poster requires for his task? How about spot colors, which are
crucial for business cards?

Thomas

_______________________________________________________________
Thomas Merz          tm@pdflib.com        http://www.pdflib.com
Personalize PDF: PDFlib Personalization Server and Block plugin
_______PDFlib - a library for generating PDF on the fly________

Ralf Koenig wrote:

> mhuhn wrote:
> > I want to develop a web-to-print-solution for a large company. A web
> > application (ASP.NET or JSP) will display a form to be filled out by
> > the user. With the entered and some database-data a PDF should be
> > generated. There are simple but also complex templates, such as a
> > business card or a product package. Good typo-quality is important.
> 
> This is typically called "database publishing".
> 
> > I thought Adobe Document Server with XSL-FO would be the best way but
> > the XSL-FO-Implementation of ADS is very disappointing. I tried
> > FrameMaker in combination with XSL-FO and ADS but FrameMaker seems to
> > be horrible and very limited concerning graphics. I tried
> > XSL-FO-Renderers like Antennahouse and RenderX but there you need
> > developers to do the final layout and things like color-profiles are
> > hardly implemented. I thought of Quark DDS with XPress-Templates but
> > there dynamics are very (too) limited. PDF Forms are a possibility but
> > they don't supply enough dynamics either, I need to be able to choose
> > colors, pictures and positions dynamically.
> > 
> > Do I miss something? Or do I underestimate some of these tools? How do
> > professionals do it? I know there are already solutions like this.
> 
> Here's my $0.02:
> 
> pdfTeX is a good choice for this type of work. It's a free, professional
> typesetter with full flexibility. A little of a raw diamond though, it
> will only show its full beauty when programmed by people with a deep
> understanding of their field.

pdfTeX is good for simple documents, however if you have a PostScript 
workflow then it can barf. Using dvips + GS is more robust, but sadly 
slower.

> A German company called Quinscape gave an excellent example what you can
> do with pdfTeX. They designed a product - DocScape - to generate a
> product catalog  as well a multitude of product sheets and related
> documents for ERCO lamps from a database, based on flexible templates:
> 
> Here's the catalog and all the other documents:
> 
http://www.erco.com/en_index.htm?http://www.erco.com/download/en/en_index_download.htm
> 
> Here's a presentation about their workflow and some figures. Even though
> it's in German, which you may not understand, look through the whole
> presentation. They show how to set up grids and fill it with boxes,
> which is a typical DTP approach, just automated. By using a real
> typesetting program (TeX) complex flows are supported and automated or
> paramterized positioning and ordering of objects.

For database publishing it is excellent. You have to define the layout and 
fields anyway, so why not go with an scripted system? 

I have seen systems that use a cludge of plugins and a DTP system: e.g. 
Quark, PageMaker, InDesign etc. They sortof work, but never very well. 
Quark have an API to their document format; "very flakey" according to the 
application programmers.

TeX typesets stuff nicely, so let it do the job for you. LaTeX is a macro 
layer over raw TeX, and is worth using.

Generally make the database app write a minimal document that calls the 
appropriate macro headers for you. All the cleverness lives in there; it 
then enables you to separate the codeing. E.g. a dispatch label to stick on 
a package:
%&latex
\input{ralfkoenig.tex}
\BeginDispatchLabel%
\SetAddressee{Mr James Morrison}%
\SetAddress{Flat 2\n Goldmine\n CA}%
\SetBarcode{123567890}%
\ShowLabel%
\EndDispatchLabel%
%%EOF

As the design/implementation of the label changes, the ASP/PHP
programmers can keep on sending the same LaTeX document.

> Another TeX relative with particular strengths in the field of database
> publishing is ConTeXt.

It's a veneer for TeX, much like LaTeX was supposed to be. But it is 
proprietory, non GPL etc.

Eric

"mhuhn" <mhuhn.de@gmail.com> wrote:

>I want to develop a web-to-print-solution for a large company. A web
>application (ASP.NET or JSP) will display a form to be filled out by
>the user. With the entered and some database-data a PDF should be
>generated. There are simple but also complex templates, such as a
>business card or a product package. Good typo-quality is important.

> How do
>professionals do it?

As an industrial strength solution, based on FrameMaker to design
templates, look into Miramo (http://www.miramo.com/)
----------------------------------------
Aandi Inston  quite@dial.pipex.com http://www.quite.com
Please support usenet! Post replies and follow-ups, don't e-mail them.

Hello Ralf,

thanks a lot for your advice. Fortunately, I am German too so the
presentation was very informative and Tex seems to be an alternative to
consider again.

Anyway, all the mentioned solutions here are good for database
publishing, which is not exactly what I need. In addition to Data Bases
I have forms (for text) and even rich controls (p.E. to position an
image) as data sources. I need more or less WYSIWYG possibilities. The
preview could be delayed a couple of seconds and does not necessarily
be 100% accurate but I need one. Furthermore, creating and editing
templates must not need lots of hours of work from a programmer but
should be (at least partially) possible through a graphical editor.

I know, a lot of needs. But shouldn't this be possible nowadays?

Thanks a lot

Best regards,
Michael

Waldo schrieb:
> I wouldn't recommend XSL-FO...

Why's that? Have you made any bad experiences? I prefer using a
standard to developing my own language or application for creating
PDFs.

mhuhn

Thomas Merz wrote:
> Ralf Koenig wrote:
> 
>>> I want to develop a web-to-print-solution for a large company. A web
>>> application (ASP.NET or JSP) will display a form to be filled out by
>>> the user. With the entered and some database-data a PDF should be
>>> generated. There are simple but also complex templates, such as a
>>> business card or a product package. Good typo-quality is important.
>>
>>
>>
>> This is typically called "database publishing".
> 
> 
> Be careful with this term since it is a trademark of one
> particular company.

Interesting, I was not aware of such general terms to be trademarks. So, 
I went to the US database of trademarks (Trademark Electronic Search 
System - Tess).

The entry was "Abandoned-Failure To Respond Or Late Response" in 1989, 
and so is declared "DEAD":
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=73764964

>> pdfTeX is a good choice for this type of work. It's a free, 
>> professional typesetter with full flexibility. A little of a raw 
>> diamond though, it will only show its full beauty when programmed by 
>> people with a deep understanding of their field.
> 
> 
> In which way does pdfTeX support ICC color profiles, which the original
> poster requires for his task? How about spot colors, which are
> crucial for business cards?

You're right, pdfTeX still may lack some of these color management 
features. Maybe a few things can be achieved by using low-level PDF 
functions of pdfLaTeX to work directly at the PDF object level. And I 
wrote, it was a raw diamond, so maybe some user writes his own package 
to support the two cases mentioned above. As long as you just have to 
add some object (ICC profiles) or deal with special colorspaces (spot 
colors) I can imagine someone taking this as a challenge and writing a 
package for this or some post- or preprocessor. At its lowest level, 
pdfTeX seems to be gneric enough to support these two cases.

Companies may also come up with certain workarounds.

Ralf

mhuhn wrote:
> Hello Ralf,
> 
> thanks a lot for your advice. Fortunately, I am German too so the
> presentation was very informative and Tex seems to be an alternative to
> consider again.
> 
> Anyway, all the mentioned solutions here are good for database
> publishing, which is not exactly what I need. In addition to Data Bases
> I have forms (for text) 

Forms almost always directly translate to lines in tables of relational 
databases, so they integrate perfectly with database publishing.

> and even rich controls (p.E. to position an image) 

That also translates to data fields:

    * file name of the image
    * x-offset, y-offset, width, height, angle of rotation
    * or more general: a transformation matrix

> as data sources. 

You will have to add a fair amount of "glue code".

> I need more or less WYSIWYG possibilities. The
> preview could be delayed a couple of seconds and does not necessarily
> be 100% accurate but I need one. 

That sounds more like interactive use, not automated web-server use.

Are you looking for some "online Word" stuff? Like customers designing a 
birthday book in a browser with some graphics capabilities? This may 
require some kind of Java application on the customer front end, while 
the backend may be pdfTeX to generate the PDF. Other people wrote 
zillions of lines of JavaScript code on the frontend to achieve this 
goal, with serious constraints on the type of browser to use. (I can 
remember a project at HP doing this.)

> Furthermore, creating and editing
> templates must not need lots of hours of work from a programmer but
> should be (at least partially) possible through a graphical editor.

Well, as a rule of thumb, "intelligent" templates - which you said to 
prefer, as the existing solutions were too static - require programmers, 
static arts stuff is better done by graphics artists. While a lot can be 
done with educating either type of workers, I agree, that only good 
tools and a streamlined workflow gain a good level of productivity.

 From the TeX perspective, these tools are considered "glue code". 
pdfTeX can take existing PDF documents (that you create with 
Illustrator, InDesign, whatever ...) and overlay objects but that's 
about as far as you can get. If you looked at the presentation 
carefully, they also incorporated many pages and filler elements 
designed manually by graphics artists. There are a few companies 
providing TeX cosulting services.

Other products may come up with ready tools and solutions. Continuing 
your search may be the right decision in this case.

> I know, a lot of needs. But shouldn't this be possible nowadays?

People have worked on Online-TeX-stuff (basically a word processor with 
TeX as a typesetter with near-real-time display updates) for years now, 
so far the results are limited:

* LyX
* emacs with the preview-latex package
* Scientific Word (commercial)
* maybe a couple more
* other people (including me) use a streamlined "text editor -> shortcut 
-> PDF in AR" workflow

None if them is intended for DTP-like work.

Ralf

Ralf Koenig wrote:

>>> This is typically called "database publishing".
>>
>> Be careful with this term since it is a trademark of one
>> particular company.
> 
> Interesting, I was not aware of such general terms to be trademarks. So, 
> I went to the US database of trademarks (Trademark Electronic Search 
> System - Tess).
> 
> The entry was "Abandoned-Failure To Respond Or Late Response" in 1989, 
> and so is declared "DEAD":
> http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=73764964

There's a valid European Trademark entry for "Database Publishing",
see http://publikationen.dpma.de/shw_tm_bib.do?id=594301

> You're right, pdfTeX still may lack some of these color management 
> features. Maybe a few things can be achieved by using low-level PDF 
> functions of pdfLaTeX to work directly at the PDF object level. And I 
> wrote, it was a raw diamond, so maybe some user writes his own package 
> to support the two cases mentioned above. As long as you just have to 
> add some object (ICC profiles) or deal with special colorspaces (spot 
> colors) I can imagine someone taking this as a challenge and writing a 
> package for this or some post- or preprocessor. At its lowest level, 
> pdfTeX seems to be gneric enough to support these two cases.

There's more to color management than simply attaching an additional
object to PDF, let alone spot colors...

Thomas

_______________________________________________________________
Thomas Merz          tm@pdflib.com        http://www.pdflib.com
Personalize PDF: PDFlib Personalization Server and Block plugin
_______PDFlib - a library for generating PDF on the fly________

mhuhn wrote:
> Anyway, all the mentioned solutions here are good for database
> publishing, which is not exactly what I need. In addition to Data Bases
> I have forms (for text) and even rich controls (p.E. to position an
> image) as data sources. I need more or less WYSIWYG possibilities. The
> preview could be delayed a couple of seconds and does not necessarily
> be 100% accurate but I need one. Furthermore, creating and editing
> templates must not need lots of hours of work from a programmer but
> should be (at least partially) possible through a graphical editor.

I don't want to make this a sales pitch, but that's exactly how
our PPS works. You can edit the templates using our Block plugin
for Acrobat, and use it to prepare variable data fields for
text, raster images or PDF graphics (existing pages). The filling
is done on the server side with all required attributes -- fast,
reliable, thread-safe, integration in all major development
environments. Editing the templates does not require any programming
know-how, but is a simple matter of using a visual interface.
Since everything is done directly on top of PDF, there's no
concept of a preview -- the filled PDF is the final result.
Of course, you could create a simpler version for preview
purposes, e.g. by using placeholders instead of the actual
images, using low-res images, etc.

Thomas

_______________________________________________________________
Thomas Merz          tm@pdflib.com        http://www.pdflib.com
Personalize PDF: PDFlib Personalization Server and Block plugin
_______PDFlib - a library for generating PDF on the fly________