Re: Fonts on the IBM i -- MIDRANGE-L

John,

So you're not comfortable enough with Java... yet you're apparently OK
with Python? Are you actually already comfortable with Python, or do
you just figure that learning "enough Python" from scratch is easier
than learning "enough Java" from scratch?

I'm open to Java or Python, whichever is easier to get up and running. I haven't really written any Java code, but I have played around with calling Java classes from RPG. It isn't something that I have done very often, so I was curious if Python would be any easier. I have seen you talk about it on these forums, so it has peeked my curiosity. Maybe "enough Python" and "enough Java" are both similar as far as the learning curve goes. I guess that was what I was trying to figure out.

I downloaded iSeriesPython and installed in on our IBM i. I then used your blog article about creating a spreadsheet and was able to get your code to work. If I want to use this for production, I should probably have our administrator install the IBM PTF's to enable the newer version of Python at 7.1. That little exercise still doesn't address my question about how easy it would be to convert HTML to PDF in Python. Java and iText may still be a better option for that.

Dean Eshleman
Software Development Architect

On 8/19/2015 5:30 PM, John Yeung wrote:

Hold on a sec...

On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 1:35 PM, Dean Eshleman
<Dean.Eshleman-d3hNrR/acMxWk0Htik3J/w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I was looking at using iText to do the conversion from HTML to PDF, but since my Java is quite limited, I'm struggling with how to go about that.

Since Python is now supported on the IBM I, I was curious if Python had a method for converting HTML to a PDF.

So you're not comfortable enough with Java... yet you're apparently OK
with Python? Are you actually already comfortable with Python, or do
you just figure that learning "enough Python" from scratch is easier
than learning "enough Java" from scratch?

Apparently it does, based on some internet searches I've done. As always though, the devil is in the details.

In my last post I expressed concern that the Python packages would
have C dependencies. That's still true, but I looked slightly (very
slightly!) closer and have come to the conclusion that if your needs
are simple enough, xhtml2pdf might just work, even without a C
compiler.

That package has two main dependencies, ReportLab and html5lib. Both
are designed to work even without their C portions (albeit with
reduced features and/or performance).

John Y.

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