I´ve already used Velocity to generate XHTML (And using FCKEditor or even Richfaces Rich Editor to create the template) and creating PDFs with Flying Saucer, and that is used in production for ages.  We should be able to export to other medias as well (Excel, CSV,etc..)

2011/3/11 Cody Lerum <cody.lerum@gmail.com>
Though it might be a little odd, using freemarker or velocity to
generate the xhtml for Flying Saucer might be an option.

With regards to iText I had the same thought. However, the Flying
Saucer guys make it clear they understand the licensing issue and are
staying on the LGPL version. Guessing a fork of iText LGPL will take
off at some point.

PDFBox is just sorely lacking in the creation API's. No support for
creating tables for example.

-C

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Dan Allen <dan.j.allen@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 13:02, George Gastaldi <gastaldi@apache.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>> I have a new proposal for a new Seam 3 Module:
>>
>> Seam Report: Integrate JasperReports, BIRT and other report solutions
>> providing an unified bridge for compiling and populating data.
>
> Yes! Finally! I've been wanting to organize a module like this for a long
> time. In my experience, the business need that unites all companies is
> reporting. Yet, there's still a large gap between web application
> development and reporting engines. As I emphasize in my talk, if you can
> just give developers the API to inject, it opens up the world to that
> technology.
>
>>
>> Could use some stuff already on Seam Mail (Velocity templates, for
>> example) and also Flying Saucer (https://xhtmlrenderer.dev.java.net/) for
>> generating PDFs based on XHTML.
>
> Cody, the Seam Mail lead, has been asking about our plans for PDF generation
> for a while. He has pointed out in the past that trying to retrofit XHTML
> for PDF generation really puts handcuffs on the developer. A much better
> approach, which is inline with the philosophy of Seam 3, is to create a
> really nice and accessible API for assembling a PDF. You get better looking
> reports with less effort in the end.
> Try to catch each other on IRC and workout the scope of the module. Then
> seed the module and point us to it, and we'll pull it into the Seam repo.
> -Dan
> p.s. The licensing terms for iText may present a barrier to using it in
> Seam. PDFBox is more license friendly, though lacks some features.
>
> --
> Dan Allen
> Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat | Author of Seam in Action
> Registered Linux User #231597
>
> http://www.google.com/profiles/dan.j.allen#about
> http://mojavelinux.com
> http://mojavelinux.com/seaminaction
>
>
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