[olug] Report Generator

[Jay Hannah]

On May 24, 2004, at 4:14 PM, Eric Penne wrote:
> I have a recurring report that i generate for my clients.  It is not 
> the
> same every time.  It has pictures, graphs, sections, text, and various
> odds and ends.

Wow. I always learn so much reading threads on OLUG -- I wasn't aware 
of the OpenOffice API project nor OOo4R. Very cool. Kudos Mike and K.J.

Far less cool than those suggestions, I might ask if you could use HTML 
templates for your reports? As I'm sure you're aware there are a 
billion tools for automating generation of HTML, embedding the items 
you specifically mentioned, burning to pdf, and distributing / 
archiving the reports.

The downside to HTML would be that you wouldn't have pixel-level 
control of layout. The upside would be that you wouldn't have to worry 
about pixel-level control of layout.

I haven't seen an example of the reports you're kicking out. I do know 
that 100% automation is good. If you don't need the level of control 
OpenOffice docs would give you I'd suggest taking a stab at a proof of 
concept via HTML. Your code would probably be a lot simpler at the end 
of the day?

Send a link to an example if you can.

j