pdf report generation in labview?

[Erik_1]

I'm trying to generate a pdf test report that will contain plots of data and other information input by the user (their name, serial numbers, etc.). The built in html report generation functionality seems to be more trouble than it's worth - I'm not looking to make a simple test report (I'm trying to format it in a rather complex way). I know I can easily convert the html file to a pdf file after the fact but it would be incredibly useful if there was a way to generate (and format) the pdf file directly in labview. Does anyone know anything about this?

Despite these limitations, I currently have it set up to generate an html file and I've found that it's easier to insert strings of html syntax (using the append text to report icon) than use most of the built in icons. The report it's generating is not what I'm looking for...

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

-Erik

[BillMe]

My users are creating their reports with DIAdem. There's no way to generate a PDF directly from LabVIEW, that I'm aware of.

[TCPlomp]

Carya has a PDF toolkit for LabVIEW, a free and proffesional version is available

Ton

[mikeporter]

Two good alternatives are PDFCreator and CutePDF Writer. They are both free, ad-free, work seamlessly (and as far as I can tell, flawlessly) , and emulate printers so they require no code modifications. In fact I typicaly keep PDFCreator set as the default printer on my laptop.

Mike..

[BillMe]

Mike and TonP,
These are simply tools to print to a file in PDF format, correct? Sounded like Erik was interested in generating a PDF report from within LabVIEW itself. Can these tools be leveraged in such a way? If so, I'd be interested in that myself.

[TCPlomp]

The link I posted is truly PDF generation in LabVIEW, truly no other decoder/printer driver!

Ton

[mikeporter]

All you have to go is when the standard report generator prints, send it to the PDF generator rather than your standard printer. What could be easier than that? No special code required.

Mike...

[Erik_1]

I actually was referring to pdf generation within labview - not post processing.

The Carya toolkit looks interesting doesnt appear to be any easier to use than built in html report generation toolkit - so it's probably easier to convert to pdf after the fact (like Mike suggested).

Thanks for the help guys.

-Erik

Message Edited by Erik_1 on 07-15-2007 02:59 PM

[Wiebe@CARYA]

"TonP" <x@no.email> wrote in message news:1184451008647-550793@exchange.ni.com...
The link I posted is truly PDF generation in LabVIEW, truly no other decoder/printer driver! Ton


Thanks Ton,


Our PDF toolkit is indeed a stand allown LabVIEW PDF generator, just like the report generation toolkit. One difference is that it doesn't use ActiveX, and no 3rd party software is needed. It does use a zlib dll (available for Linux, Windows, and a few other platforms, and open source I think) for flate compression. If you don't need compression we could remove this, and it will be 100% pure LabVIEW. So in potential (we didn't test this) it should even run on RT platforms.


A few extra benefits are you can add links to other locations in the document (or internet), very convenient for an index or table of contents. And you can add a document map with as many sub chapters and paragraphs as you like. These options are not in the free version though.


Regards,


Wiebe.

[mikeporter]

I have looked at the information on your solution and I still don't see the point of obtaining and learning to use a completely different report generation package when all you need is a way to output to a PDF file. You see the bottom line is that to use your commercial solution, you have to rewrite your code. With the solutions I have proposed you simply point your existing report generation code to a different output device. And what sort of solution do you have for generating a PDF from Excel or other Windows applications? Oh yeah I forgot, this only works for LabVIEW...

By the way, are the block diagrams of your software unlocked?

Mike...