Showing dynamic images in BI Publisher PDF report

Question

I defined a RTF report layout in BI Publisher. Almost done, but one requirement missing...
I should be able to include a dynamic image (so every "object" on the report has it's own image).
At first I embedded the base64 converted image in the XML output, but then I am running into the 32K limit. (Small pictures render fine).
Although Marc Sewtz sort of promised in June 2008 (!) : "One issue, which we'll address in the next version of Application Express, is the 32k limit on report columns." on his blogpost http://marcsewtz.blogspot.com/2008/06/one-question-about-pdf-printing-feature.html , it still not addressed.
So I tried to embed the image in the report using a trick described on the forum (and BIP documentation), by embedding a dummy picture and set the "Alt-text" of the picture to
(as an example) : url:{'http://www.oracleimg.com/us/assets/oralogo-small.gif'}.
The strange thing is, that works fine for HTML Output and Excel output, but not for Word and PDF (why it does work for Excel and not for Word is very mysterious....). And of course I need a PDF output.
I also tried to embed a FO snippet:
<fo:block>
<fo:external-graphic src="url:{'http://www.oracleimg.com/us/assets/oralogo-small.gif'}" />
</fo:block>
But that doesn't (seem to) work on any output...
But
<fo:block>
<fo:external-graphic src="D:\Users\rhartman\Documents\PrintScreen Files\Screenshot004.jpg" />
</fo:block>
does produce the image on the PDF output.
So who has an idea how to solve this issue?? You'll be rewarded with a lot of pionts ;-)
TIA
Roel

Answer 1

Hi Carsten
That was exactly* I was looking for. Maybe I should Google more in German ;-)
The main problem was that I defined my image outside the first repeating group (that doesn't repeat, it's always just one object) - the first group is followed by 7 more.
Just like the "Name" (that's positioned outside the group in the document header), I positioned the image above the table representing the group.
Doing that, the "Name" is filled correctly, the Image only when the Output Format is Excel or HTML - not Word or PDF ... makes no sense but that's tje way it is.
After moving the image inside the group....it works great!
(One more thing...the image size is fixed to the image you use as "dummy". Is there any way to make that more flexible, because now some scaling happens...)???
@Trent: That was the way we initially did it, but when the size of the row exceeds 32K...you know what happens.. And even with a small image the 32K limit is hit easily
The way I use it now (very similar to Carsten's description) there is no limit....
Thank you all!
Roel