pa***********@l ibero.it wrote:
>If you have a genuinely good reason for maintaining a completely
fixed layout (it does happen occasionally - I can't judge from your
post whether this is the case here) then the best approach is
probably to provide a PDF document to the reader.
We already do. But enterprises want web pages mostly.
With PDF, you can get precise control of typography, spacing and so on.
With HTML, you provide a flexible layout that should aim to look "good
enough" on as wide a variety of popular browsers s possible.
You need to explain to your "enterprise s", that they can have one, or
the other, or both; but they can't have both using the same technology
and the same URL.
If you're selling your services to these enterprises, then it's in your
interest to encourage them to go for both. Then you get to charge them
for two different designs.
>
There are also interactivity problem as I have to handle the click on
each cell. and there could be thousands of cell arranged in any
possible layout, not necessarily "tables".
Cells can have pictures and alarms inside. There can be label
superposed precisely on charts,... So a mess.
I thought you described these things as "enterprise reports" - what you
are talking bout seems to be some kind of applicattion, not a normal report.
There are web-based reporting tools that allow you to interactively
drill down into corporate databases, produce consolidated ready-to-print
regional sales figures, and all that; but they are expensive, and tend
not to work cross-browser, and tend not to respect the fact that some
users need to override the author's rendering suggestions. The fact that
these solutions are expensive *and* sell, suggests that the enterprises
that buy them aren't entirely on-the-ball.
The situtions in which I've seen these things demo-d and sold have some
or all of these characteristics :
* The solution is used exclusively by in-house staff
* The material being presented is more-or-less confidential
* In-house staff are required to use Internet Explorer version $LAST-1
* IE settings must allow all kinds of executable content to execute
uninterrupted
* The resulting page is often intended for use in sales proposals and
bids
Such software is expensive because it's complex and hard to write well.
The best solutions also have a "Render to PDF" option anyway.
If you output your report as XML, you can then use XSLT to generate
either nice, versatile HTML that will work in (nearly) any browser,
although it won't necessarily be anything like pixel-perfect; or PDF,
which will appear exactly as specified by the murketing department.
Generating PDF from XSL can be done with free/libre tools (there are
also expensive commercial tools that don't do a better job of it).
>
I am always trying to do the best compromise between many factors.
You are like artists.
Who? Me? I think not, somehow; I wish I had even the vestiges of good taste.
It's more less like telling Michelangelo to go buy a paint at a shop.
But most people are not Michelangelo, ... and they do have to go buy
it to the shop...
It's more like asking Leonardo to produce a gallery-grade masterpiece
rendition in oil of his latest prototype design for a flying machine.
He'd try to presuade you that not only would the design not be properly
readable if painted in oil; but that the proper medium for an
engineering drawing is - well - a drawing.
>
I bet 95% of you (in this group) would throw Front Page directly in
the dubstin,
Yer probably right.
but nevertheless it's an indispensable tool to million of persons who
focus their life on other things (like money for instance).
That is wrong. There is nothing that can be done with Front Page that
can't be done better and more easily using better tools. Front Page is
not only obsolete; it generates awful, unmaintainable HTML, and it ties
you into expensive technology from a single vendor (or at least it tries
to). Doing things better and more easily is the key to beating the
competition, and so to making money, and Front Page is unhelpful in
meeting that objective.
What it has going for it is that it comes for "free" with a certain
expensive office-productivity suite; and on the face of it, it seems to
be a drag-and-drop application. But even in the drag-and-drop world,
there are better HTML editors.
>
I understand all the instances of you artists, and I try to get as
close as possible, because I admire you, but on the other hand must
do fight with a lot of other factors...
Most of the people here are engineers of one kind or another (as far as
I can tell). And my sense is that you are neither an artist nor an
engineer, but an office functionary of some kind, who has been asked to
perform a task that is (currently) outside of their skill-set.
>
-Pam
Is that single hyphen your sig-separator:-?)
--
Jack.
http://www.jackpot.uk.net/ 
