PDF printing capabilities

Hi there
I have here in Apex3 a report that, using some CSS/HTML tricks (basically a div element with specific CSS classes), I managed to colour some of the cells based on their contents.
Now the user wants to export it to PDF format, what was easily achieved using Apache FOP. However, of course, the div trick does not work with PDF and a nbsp (which I put inside the div) is displayed instead of the colouring.
PDF generation is new to me, so I have a few questions regarding it... Is it possible to colour cells in a report and do fancy things like that, as you can do in HTML? Or is PDF printing only able to display simple reports, with plain text?
Can anyone provide a link to a sample application that shows all the capabilities of PDF printing? (ideally with Apache FOP)
If such functionality cannot be achieved because of Apache FOP limitations, if I use the Oracle printing suite product (sorry, can't remember its name) will those limitations be overcome?
Thanks,
Luis

Hi Luis,
You can create some incredibly complex and rich reports using the BI Publisher (BIP) integration that APEX allows. In your report template (using the BIP plugins) you can use conditional logic to make colour columns/rows etc depending on certain criteria.
It is possible to do this yourself using the (free) Apache FOP solution, however it involves a great deal of hand-crafting the XSL-FO code yourself (not a task to be taken lightly, but entirely possible).
If you have the budget for it (or your requirement is urgent), then I highly recommend using BIP, if you don't have the budget then I recommend Apache FOP and a bottomless coffee pot and ready access to a local bakery (you're going to need the caffeine and sugar to get you through the manual XSL-FO coding).
Another possibility is to investigate PL/PDF (www.plpdf.com) which might suit your needs.
Hope this helps,
John.

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Kind Regards,
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Edited by: Ana-Maria on 16.10.2008 05:03

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select e.DEPTNO, d.DNAME, d.LOC, e.ENAME, e.JOB
from emp e, dept d
where e.deptno = d.deptno
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Regards,
Vadim

Hi Mike,
My standard printing is working nicely. That's the custom reporting that I experience problems with.
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I must admit that the whole APEX PDF printing using Tomcat/Cocoon (and probably Fop because that's what used by Cocoon behind the scene anyway) is unfortunately a hack. Reporting does not have to be that complex.
I would be extremely grateful if somebody can tell me what sort of XML tool is best suited to generate XSL-FO files that can be easily understood by APEX/Tomcat/Cocoon.
Regards,
Vadim

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If, it is launched without an error, a service on your system is conflicting with Acrobat/Reader.
Let me know if issue persist.
Regards,
Aadesh

PDF printer

Hi All,
Kindly help me answering the following questions.
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Regards!

got the answer

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Moving this discussion to the Creating, Editing, & Exporting PDFs forum.

PDF printing capabilities

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