Lars’s Blog

After a lot of coding for the PDF exporter add on for AODL this weekend I have reached the first running state for simple PDF table support. On the way to the simple table support I have also successfully implemented paragraphs, simple text, formated text, whitespaces, headings, fonts, font properties like color, bold, etc., paragraph styles, parent-style fallbacks and a simple support for tabstops. Whereas tabstops only will be simulated within the exporter, because they doesn’t exists in the PDF. Since it’s only a simple simulation without recalculating the real distances the conversation of a “tabstop layouted” area like simulating columns won’t offer an optimal result. However, I still hope to finish a first preview version for public download within this week. Next to the features which are already implemented I will also try to implement page properties like margin and orientation, simple graphic conversation and table layouts. For a demonstration about the possibilties of the PDF exporter I’m going to write a small application which could generate bills in the OpenDocument text and the PDF format. Any feedback is welcome ….