Trampoline! 0.5.1 released

Mac Cody — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 05:51:24 -0000

Trampoline!(C) - Helping Acrobat(R) documents leap off the Tk canvas
Version 0.5.1 - Code fix release

What is it?

Trampoline! is a nearly pure-Tcl library extension that generates an
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) document based upon the content
of a Tk canvas. The intent of this extension is to provide a "modern"
replacement for the Tk canvas widget command postscript, which generates
a Postscript document based upon the content of a Tk canvas. Trampoline!
is striving to be compliant with Adobe PDF Reference version 1.4.

Trampoline! 0.5.1 is a code fix release. No new features are added to
this release of Trampoline!, but a number of changes have been made to
allow proper PDF document generation on both Unix and Microsoft Windows
platforms. The PDF document generated is also more compliant with the
PDF standard. The generated test document can now be read sucessfully
and without complaint by Adobe Acroread 5.0.8, Xpdf 2.02pl1, and
Ghostview (gv) 3.5.8. Details on the changes made for this release of
Trampoline! can be view in the file ChangeLog.txt.

The Trampoline! library is loaded using the command

package require trampoline

which creates the ::pdf namespace. Though there are a number of
supporting functions within the namespace, the only one that is
currently directly usable is the ::pdf::generate command. This command
has two parameters. The first is the path to the canvas widget. The
second is the name of the file that will hold the PDF document. More
parameters and options will be added as the package matures.

The example script provided with the distribution can be used as a
guide to using Trampoline!. As the package matures, the example script
will change in order to demonstrate the various features of the
Trampoline! library.

Trampoline! 0.5 features and limitations

Trampoline! is written for Tcl/Tk 8.4 or later. While it was developed
and tested on a computer running Slackware Linux 9.1, some testing has
also been done on compters running Microsoft Windows operating systems.
Trampoline! should work on any platform that support Tcl/Tk and
(optionally) the Img extension. Testers are encouraged to try
Trampoline! on their platform. Reports of success or problems are
welcome.

Trampoline! supports all canvas item types, but not every item option,
as yet. The Img extension is used to capture the Tk widgets displayed
within canvas window items. This is why Trampoline! is described as
being a "nearly pure-Tcl" extension. If the user does not plan on
having canvas window items within the canvas, the Img extension does
not need to be loaded. Trampoline! will still function properly as
long as no window items are on the canvas. Note that all canvas
coordinates must be specified in pixels.

Future goals and Feedback

Work still needs to be done in adding feature options to Trampoline!.
Eventually, Trampoline! will have as many of the commands and options
of the canvas postscript command has as is feasible. Unique commands
and options related to PDF document generation will also be added as
warranted.

An effort is also underway to refactor the extension into Tk-independent
and Tk-dependent components. The goal is to eventually have PDF
document generation independent of any Tk commands. These functions
would be placed in an extension called TclPDF. The Tk-dependent
functions would call the PDF functions to generate a document. These
functions would stay in the Trampoline! extension. Both libraries would
share the ::pdf namespace, with Trampoline! acting as an add-on to
TclPDF.

It is also hoped that at some future date Trampoline! would become part
of tklib and TclPDF would become part of tcllib.

For comment and suggestions, I can be contacted at
mcody <at> users.sourceforge.net.

Availablity

Trampoline! is available in gziped tar file format for the Unix
environment and zip file format for the Microsoft Windows environment.
It can be obtained from the Trampoline! home page and SourceForge
Summary page:

Home page: http://trampoline.sourceforge.net
SourceForge Summary page: http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/trampoline

Enjoy!

Mac A. Cody

Trampoline! 0.5 Released

Mac Cody — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:17:39 -0000

Trampoline!(C) - Helping Acrobat(R) documents leap off the Tk canvas
Version 0.5

What is it?

Trampoline! is a nearly pure-Tcl library extension that generates an
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) document based upon the content of
a Tk canvas. The intent of this extension is to provide a "modern"
replacement for the Tk canvas widget command postscript, which generates
a Postscript document based upon the content of a Tk canvas. Trampoline!
is striving to be compliant with Adobe PDF Reference version 1.4.

The Trampoline! 0.5 library is loaded using the command

package require trampoline

The example script provided with the distribution can be used as a guide
to using Trampoline!. As the package matures, the example script will
change in order to demonstrate the various features of the Trampoline!
library.

Trampoline! 0.5 features and limitations

Trampoline! is written for Tcl/Tk 8.4 or later. While it was developed
and tested on a computer running Slackware Linux 9.1, some testing has
also been done on a compter running Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional.
Trampoline! should work on any platform that support Tcl/Tk and
(optionally) the Img extension. Testers are encouraged to try
Trampoline! on their platform. Reports of success or problems are
welcome.

Trampoline! supports all canvas item types, but not every item option,
as yet. The Img extension is used to capture the Tk widgets displayed
within canvas window items. This is why Trampoline! is described as
being a "nearly pure-Tcl" extension. If the user does not plan on
having canvas window items within the canvas, the Img extension does not
need to be loaded. Trampoline! will still function properly as long as
no window items are on the canvas. Note that all canvas coordinates
must be specified in pixels.

Future goals and Feedback

Work still needs to be done in adding feature options to Trampoline!.
Eventually, Trampoline! will have as many of the commands and options of
the canvas postscript command has as is feasible. Unique commands and
options related to PDF document generation will also be added as
warranted.

It is also hoped that at some future date Trampoline! would become part
of tklib and TclPDF would become part of tcllib.

For comment and suggestions, I can be contacted at
mcody <at> users.sourceforge.net.

Availablity

Home page: http://trampoline.sourceforge.net
SourceForge Summary page: http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/trampoline

Enjoy!

Mac A. Cody

Recent posts to news

Trampoline! 0.5.1 released

Trampoline! 0.5 Released