Is there a better layout language than HTML for printing? [closed]

Answer 1

By print do you mean a printer? If so, check ReportLab's PDF tools.

from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
from reportlab.lib.units import cm
c = canvas.Canvas("hello.pdf")
c.drawString(9*cm, 22*cm, "Hello World!")
c.showPage()
c.save()

Answer 2

XSL Formatting Objects (part of the The Extensible Stylesheet Language Family (XSL)) if you need total control over printed documents.

Then, you'll need a Formatting Objects processor, like FOP or Antenna house, to transform the XSL-FO document into PDF, or PostScript.

Answer 3

JasperReports has already been mentioned, but we use it in our Python-Qt applications WITHOUT a server or servlet (that is, without needing JasperServer or pyJasper).

So basically, instead of the server/servlet, you install the Jasper Reports Library. Then you need to create a little Java program that uses the Jasper Reports Library to generate a PDF report from serialized input, such as XML. There should be plenty of examples of this if you do a web search, and you only need to write this one time. Then you compile this Java program, with all the required libraries, into a JAR file.

At this point you can install the JasperSoft Studio and create a Jasper report template. Then in Python you can use JPype (or any other Python-to-Java library) to start a JVM, load your JAR file, call your Java function, pass it your serialized data, and specify which report template you want.

All of this is not trivial, but it's pretty straightforward. We like this solution because it provides a drag-and-drop form editor in the Qt Designer/Creator, a drag-and-drop JasperReports report designer, and the ability to generate a PDF report directly from data collected in Python. All of this uses well-supported tools and libraries, so it's unlikely this solution will fall apart in the foreseeable future.

Answer 4

What's wrong with just using Qt's native printing?

Answer 5

Have you seen http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-page/ ? The print media is highly customizable. In my new project I'm going to replace PDF generator by this one.

Answer 6

There's LaTeX. Not sure if that falls into the "as easy to use as html" category, but it's not hard.