[Lazarus] PDF generator, try 2

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Thu, 31 Mar 2016, Ondrej Pokorny wrote:

> On 31.03.2016 20:39, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
>> On Thu, 31 Mar 2016, Ondrej Pokorny wrote:
>> 
>>> A quick question (sorry I haven't tested): is word breaking supported and 
>>> is it possible to get the target rect of multiline and singleline text?
>> 
>> It is possible to get a target rect of a single line; unit fpttf:
>> 
>> function TextWidth(AStr: string; APointSize: single): single;
>> 
>> Word breaking is left to the calling application.
>> A reporting tool is in the make (well, made, but not released yet)
>> which will handle this.
>
> Great, thank you!
>
> And is it possible the other way round? I.e. I know the target rect and I 
> have to export a single line exactly into that rect? (The text has to be 
> scaled to fill the rect.)

I suspect this can be easily implemented.

>
> Why I ask: I need to print my PDFs directly from a Lazarus application. I 
> have to render the page on a canvas (monitor for preview, printer for 
> printing) and create a PDF from the same source. All three targets (monitor, 
> printer, PDF) have to be exactly equal.
> I achieved this in Delphi with Synopse PDF. Now I'd like to port my reporting 
> solution to Lazarus.


Synopse pdf is the reason I started fppdf. Synopse is heavily Windows
centric, but otherwise quite capable.

Fppdf is a young library (although it required many months of work)
I am sure many improvements will be made as the reporting library develops.

A canvas descendant that renders to pdf is planned, but not very high
priority.

Patches and suggestions are definitely welcome. The library is intended for
production, so quality is important.

Michael.