#Copyright ReportLab Europe Ltd. 2000-2004 #see license.txt for license details #history http://www.reportlab.co.uk/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/public/reportlab/trunk/reportlab/docs/userguide/ch1_intro.py from reportlab.tools.docco.rl_doc_utils import * import reportlab title("ReportLab PDF Library") title("User Guide") centred('ReportLab Version ' + reportlab.Version) nextTemplate("Normal") ######################################################################## # # Chapter 1 # ######################################################################## heading1("Introduction") heading2("About this document") disc("""This document is an introduction to the ReportLab PDF library. Some previous programming experience is presumed and familiarity with the Python Programming language is recommended. If you are new to Python, we tell you in the next section where to go for orientation. """) disc(""" This manual does not cover 100% of the features, but should explain all the main concepts and help you get started, and point you at other learning resources. After working your way through this, you should be ready to begin writing programs to produce sophisticated reports. """) disc("""In this chapter, we will cover the groundwork:""") bullet("What is ReportLab all about, and why should I use it?") bullet("What is Python?") bullet("How do I get everything set up and running?") todo(""" We need your help to make sure this manual is complete and helpful. Please send any feedback to our user mailing list, which is signposted from www.reportlab.org. """) heading2("What is the ReportLab PDF Library?") disc("""This is a software library that lets you directly create documents in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) using the Python programming language. It also creates charts and data graphics in various bitmap and vector formats as well as PDF.""") disc("""PDF is the global standard for electronic documents. It supports high-quality printing yet is totally portable across platforms, thanks to the freely available Acrobat Reader. Any application which previously generated hard copy reports or driving a printer can benefit from making PDF documents instead; these can be archived, emailed, placed on the web, or printed out the old-fashioned way. However, the PDF file format is a complex indexed binary format which is impossible to type directly. The PDF format specification is more than 600 pages long and PDF files must provide precise byte offsets -- a single extra character placed anywhere in a valid PDF document can render it invalid. This makes it harder to generate than HTML.""") disc("""Most of the world's PDF documents have been produced by Adobe's Acrobat tools, or rivals such as JAWS PDF Creator, which act as 'print drivers'. Anyone wanting to automate PDF production would typically use a product like Quark, Word or Framemaker running in a loop with macros or plugins, connected to Acrobat. Pipelines of several languages and products can be slow and somewhat unwieldy. """) disc("""The ReportLab library directly creates PDF based on your graphics commands. There are no intervening steps. Your applications can generate reports extremely fast - sometimes orders of magnitude faster than traditional report-writing tools. This approach is shared by several other libraries - PDFlib for C, iText for Java, iTextSharp for .NET and others. However, The ReportLab library differs in that it can work at much higher levels, with a full featured engine for laying out documents complete with tables and charts. """) disc("""In addition, because you are writing a program in a powerful general purpose language, there are no restrictions at all on where you get your data from, how you transform it, and the kind of output you can create. And you can reuse code across whole families of reports.""") disc("""The ReportLab library is expected to be useful in at least the following contexts:""") bullet("Dynamic PDF generation on the web") bullet("High-volume corporate reporting and database publishing") bullet("""An embeddable print engine for other applications, including a 'report language' so that users can customize their own reports. This is particularly relevant to cross-platform apps which cannot rely on a consistent printing or previewing API on each operating system.""") bullet("""A 'build system' for complex documents with charts, tables and text such as management accounts, statistical reports and scientific papers """) bullet("""Going from XML to PDF in one step!""") heading2("What is Python?") disc(""" Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language. It is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Scheme or Java. """) disc(""" Python combines remarkable power with very clear syntax. It has modules, classes, exceptions, very high level dynamic data types, and dynamic typing. There are interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as well as to various windowing systems (X11, Motif, Tk, Mac, MFC). New built-in modules are easily written in C or C++. Python is also usable as an extension language for applications that need a programmable interface. """) disc(""" Python is as old as Java and has been growing steadily in popularity for 13 years; since our library first came out it has entered the mainstream. Many ReportLab library users are already Python devotees, but if you are not, we feel that the language is an excellent choice for document-generation apps because of its expressiveness and ability to get data from anywhere. """) disc(""" Python is copyrighted but freely usable and distributable, even for commercial use. """) heading2("Acknowledgements") disc("""Many people have contributed to ReportLab. We would like to thank in particular (in approximately chronological order) Chris Lee, Magnus Lie Hetland, Robert Kern, Jeff Bauer (who contributed normalDate.py); Jerome Alet (numerous patches and the rlzope demo), Andre Reitz, Max M, Albertas Agejevas, T Blatter, Ron Peleg, Gary Poster, Steve Halasz, Andrew Mercer, Paul McNett, Chad Miller, Tim Roberts, Jorge Godoy and Benn B.""") disc("""Special thanks go to Just van Rossum for his valuable assistance with font technicalities and the LettErrorRobot-Chrome type 1 font.""") disc("""Marius Gedminas deserves a big hand for contributing the work on TrueType fonts and we are glad to include these in the toolkit. Finally we thank Bigelow & Holmes Inc ($design@bigelowandholmes.com$) for Luxi Serif Regular and Ray Larabie ($http://www.larabiefonts.com$) for the Rina TrueType font.""") heading2("Installation and Setup") disc(""" Below we provide an abbreviated setup procedure for Python experts and a more verbose procedure for people who are new to Python. """) heading3("Installation for experts") disc("""First of all, we'll give you the high-speed version for experienced Python developers:""") list("""Install Python 2.3 or later (2.4 recommended). ReportLab 2.x uses Python 2.3 features and will use 2.4 going forwards. We also maintain a 1.x branch which works back to Python 2.1. """) list("""If you want to produce compressed PDF files (recommended), check that zlib is installed.""") list("""If you want to work with bitmap images, install and test the Python Imaging Library""") list("""Unpack the reportlab package (reportlab.zip or reportlab.tgz) into a directory on your path. (You can also use ^python setup.py install^ if you wish)""") list("""Unpack the rl_addons package and build the C extensions with distutils; or grab the corresponding .pyd files from our download page. """) list("""$cd$ to ^reportlab/test^ and execute $runAll.py$. This will create many PDF files. """) list("""You may also want to download and run the ^rl_check.py^ on our site, which health-checks an installation and reports on any missing options. """) disc(" ") disc("""If you have any problems, check the 'Detailed Instructions' section below.""") heading3("A note on available versions") disc("""The $reportlab$ library can be found at $ftp.reportlab.com$ in the top-level directory or at http://www.reportlab.com/ftp/. Each successive version is stored in both zip and tgz format, but the contents are identical apart from line endings. Versions are numbered: $ReportLab_1_00.zip$, $ReportLab_1_01.zip$ and so on. The latest stable version is also available as just $reportlab.zip$ (or $reportlab.tgz$), which is actually a symbolic link to the latest numbered version. Finally, daily snapshots off the trunk are available as $current.zip$ (or $current.tgz$). """) heading3("Instructions for novices: Windows") disc("""This section assumes you don't know much about Python. We cover all of the steps for three common platforms, including how to verify that each one is complete. While this may seem like a long list, everything takes 5 minutes if you have the binaries at hand.""") restartList() list("""Get and install Python from $http://www.python.org/.$ Reportlab 2.x works with Python 2.3 upwards but we strongly recommend to use the latest stable version of Python (2.4.3 at the time of writing). Follow the links to 'Download' and get the latest official version. This will install itself into $C:\Python24$ After installing, you should be able to run the 'Python (command line)' option from the Start Menu.""") list("""If on Windows, we strongly recommend installing the Python Windows Extensions, which let you use access all the Windows data sources, and provide a very nice IDE. This can be found at ^http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/^. Once this is installed, you can start Pythonwin from the Start Menu and get a GUI application.""") list("""The next step is optional and only necessary if you want to include images in your reports; it can also be carried out later. However we always recommend a full installation if time permits.""") list("""Install the Python Imaging Library ($PIL$) from $http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/$. """) list("""Now you are ready to install reportlab itself. Unzip the archive straight into your Python directory; it creates a subdirectory named $reportlab$. You should now be able to go to a Python command line interpreter and type $import reportlab$ without getting an error message.""") list("""Download the zip file of precompiled DLLs for your Python version from the bottom of the ^http://www.reportlab.org/downloads.html^ downloads page, and unzip them into ^C:\Python24\lib\site-packages^ (or its equivalent for other Python versions""") list("""Open up a $MS-DOS$ command prompt and CD to "$..\\reportlab\\test$". Enter "$runAll.py$". You should see lots of dots and no error messages. This will also create many PDF files and generate the manuals in ^reportlab/docs^ (including this one). """) list(""" Finally, we recommend you download and run the script ^rl_check.py^ from ^^http://www.reportlab.org/ftp/^. This will health-check all the above steps and warn you if anything is missing or mismatched.""") heading3("Instructions for Python novices: Unix") restartList() list("""On a large number of Unix and Linux distributions, Python is already installed, or is avaialable as a standard package you can install with the relevant package manager.""") list("""If you want to compile from source download the latest sources from http://www.python.org (currently the latest source is in http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.4.3/Python-2.4.3.tgz). If you wish to use binaries get the latest RPM or DEB or whatever package and install (or get your super user (system administrator) to do the work).""") list("""If you are building Python yourself, unpack the sources into a temporary directory using a tar command e.g. $tar xzvf Python-2.4.3.tgz$; this will create a subdirectory called Python-2.4.3 (or whatever). cd into this directory. Then read the file $README$! It contains the latest information on how to install Python.""") list("""If your system has the gzip libz library installed check that the zlib extension will be installed by default by editing the file Modules/Setup.in and ensuring that (near line 405) the line containing zlib zlibmodule.c is uncommented i.e. has no hash '#' character at the beginning. You also need to decide if you will be installing in the default location (/usr/local/) or in some other place. The zlib module is needed if you want compressed PDF and for some images.""") list("""Invoke the command $./configure --prefix=/usr/local$ this should configure the source directory for building. Then you can build the binaries with a $make$ command. If your $make$ command is not up to it try building with $make MAKE=make$. If all goes well install with $make install$.""") list("""If all has gone well and python is in the execution search path you should now be able to type $python$ and see a Python prompt.""") list(""" Once you can do that it's time to try and install ReportLab. First get the latest reportlab.tgz. If ReportLab is to be available to all then the reportlab archive should be unpacked in the lib/site-python directory (typically /usr/local/lib/site-python) if necessary by a superuser. Otherwise unpack in a directory of your choice and arrange for that directory to be on your $PYTHONPATH$ variable. """) eg(""" #put something like this in your #shell rcfile PYTHONPATH=$HOME/mypythonpackages export PYTHONPATH """,after=0.1) list("""You should now be able to run python and execute the python statement """,doBullet=0) eg("""import reportlab""",after=0.1) list("""If you want to use images you should certainly consider getting & installing the Python Imaging Library - follow the directions from $http://www.python.org/sigs/image-sig/index.html$ or get it directly from $http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/$.""") heading3("Instructions for Python novices: Mac") disc(""" This is much, much easier with Mac OS X since Python (usually 2.3) is installed on your system as standard. Just follow the instructions for installing the ReportLab archive above. """) heading3("Instructions for Jython (Java implementation of Python) users") disc(""" A port to Java was done in 2004. This involved some changes to the framework and creating Java equivalents of the C extensions. At the end of this work the entire output of the test suite produced byte-for-byte identical output. However, we have not been testng against Jython since, because (a) as far as we know no one used it, and (b) Jython has not kept up with Python features which we need to use. We suggest you use ReportLab v1.19 or v1.20 which were Python-2.1 compatible. We'd welcome test reports and/or a volunteer to refresh things now that Jython is progressing.""") disc(""" The Jython version was tested under Sun's J2SDK 1.3.1. It is known that under J2SDK 1.4.0_01 $test_pdfbase_ttfonts.py$ fails horribly with an outOfMemory exception, probably caused by a JVM bug. """) restartList() list(""" Before installing Jython, make sure you have a supported version of Java Virtual Machine installed. For the list of supported JVM's see $http://www.jython.org/platform.html$ """) list(""" To install Jython, download the setup package from $www.jython.org$ and follow installation instructions. """) list(""" To set ReportLab toolkit under Jython PATH, edit $JYTHON_HOME/registry$ file and include line that tells Jython where to look for packages. To include ReportLab toolkit under Jython PATH, directory that contains Reportlab should be included: $python.path=REPORTLAB_HOME_PARENT_DIR$ For example, if your Reportlab toolkit is installed under $C:\code\\reportlab$ the path line should be: $python.path=C:\\\\code$ (note two backslashes!) """) heading3("Instructions for IronPython (Python for .NET) users") disc(""" We haven't tackled this yet officially, but IronPython can apparently run much of our code. We do need to go through the same exercises we did for Jython - finding the .NET equivalents of _rl_accel, pyRXP, _renderPM and PIL - to get 100% managed code. Hopefully this will happen soon and we'd be delighted to work with anyone on this. """) heading2("Getting Involved") disc("""ReportLab is an Open Source project. Although we are a commercial company we provide the core PDF generation sources freely, even for commercial purposes, and we make no income directly from these modules. We also welcome help from the community as much as any other Open Source project. There are many ways in which you can help:""") bullet("""General feedback on the core API. Does it work for you? Are there any rough edges? Does anything feel clunky and awkward?""") bullet("""New objects to put in reports, or useful utilities for the library. We have an open standard for report objects, so if you have written a nice chart or table class, why not contribute it?""") bullet("""Demonstrations and Case Studies: If you have produced some nice output, send it to us (with or without scripts). If ReportLab solved a problem for you at work, write a little 'case study' and send it in. And if your web site uses our tools to make reports, let us link to it. We will be happy to display your work (and credit it with your name and company) on our site!""") bullet("""Working on the core code: we have a long list of things to refine or to implement. If you are missing some features or just want to help out, let us know!""") disc("""The first step for anyone wanting to learn more or get involved is to join the mailing list. To Subscribe visit $http://two.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/reportlab-users$. From there you can also browse through the group's archives and contributions. The mailing list is the place to report bugs and get support. """) heading2("Site Configuration") disc("""There are a number of options which most likely need to be configured globally for a site. The python script module $reportlab/rl_config.py$ may be edited to change the values of several important sitewide properties.""") bullet("""verbose: set to integer values to control diagnostic output.""") bullet("""shapeChecking: set this to zero to turn off a lot of error checking in the graphics modules""") bullet("""defaultEncoding: set this to WinAnsiEncoding or MacRomanEncoding.""") bullet("""defaultPageSize: set this to one of the values defined in reportlab/lib/pagesizes.py; as delivered it is set to pagesizes.A4; other values are pagesizes.letter etc.""") bullet("""defaultImageCaching: set to zero to inhibit the creation of .a85 files on your hard-drive. The default is to create these preprocessed PDF compatible image files for faster loading""") bullet("""T1SearchPath: this is a python list of strings representing directories that may be queried for information on Type 1 fonts""") bullet("""TTFSearchPath: this is a python list of strings representing directories that may be queried for information on TrueType fonts""") bullet("""CMapSearchPath: this is a python list of strings representing directories that may be queried for information on font code maps.""") bullet("""showBoundary: set to non-zero to get boundary lines drawn.""") bullet("""ZLIB_WARNINGS: set to non-zero to get warnings if the Python compression extension is not found.""") bullet("""pageComression: set to non-zero to try and get compressed PDF.""") bullet("""allowtableBoundsErrors: set to 0 to force an error on very large Platypus table elements""") bullet("""emptyTableAction: Controls behaviour for empty tables, can be 'error' (default), 'indicate' or 'ignore'.""") heading2("Learning More About Python") disc(""" If you are a total beginner to Python, you should check out one or more from the growing number of resources on Python programming. The following are freely available on the web: """) bullet("""Introductory Material on Python. A list of tutorials on the Python.org web site. $http://www.python.org/doc/Intros.html$ """) bullet("""Python Tutorial. The official Python Tutorial by Guido van Rossum (edited by Fred L. Drake, Jr.) $http://www.python.org/doc/tut/$ """) bullet("""Learning to Program. A tutorial on programming by Alan Gauld. Has a heavy emphasis on Python, but also uses other languages. $http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/$ """) bullet("""How to think like a computer scientist (Python version). $http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/$ """) bullet("""Instant Python. A 6-page minimal crash course by Magnus Lie Hetland. $http://www.hetland.org/python/instant-python.php$ """) bullet("""Dive Into Python. A free Python tutorial for experienced programmers. $http://diveintopython.org/$ """) from reportlab.lib.codecharts import SingleByteEncodingChart from reportlab.tools.docco.stylesheet import getStyleSheet styles = getStyleSheet() indent0_style = styles['Indent0'] indent1_style = styles['Indent1'] heading2("What's New in ReportLab 2.0") disc(""" Many new features have been added, foremost amongst which is the support for unicode. This page documents what has changed since version 1.20.""") disc(""" Adding full unicode support meant that we had to break backwards-compatibility, so old code written for ReportLab 1 will sometimes need changes before it will run correctly with ReportLab 2. Now that we have made the clean break to introduce this important new feature, we intend to keep the API backwards-compatible throughout the 2.* series. """) heading3("Goals for the 2.x series") disc(""" The main rationale for 2.0 was an incompatible change at the character level: to properly support Unicode input. Now that it's out we will maintain compatibility with 2.0. There are no pressing feature wishlists and new features will be driven, as always, by contributions and the demands of projects.""") disc(""" Our 1.x code base is still Python 2.1 compatible. The new version lets us move forwards with a baseline of Python 2.4 (2.3 will work too, for the moment, but we don't promise that going forwards) so we can use newer language features freely in our development.""") disc(""" One area where we do want to make progress from release to release is with documentation and installability. We'll be looking into better support for distutils, setuptools, eggs and so on; and into better examples and tools to help people learn what's in the (substantial) code base.""") disc(""" Bigger ideas and more substantial rewrites are deferred to Version 3.0, with no particular target dates. """) heading3("Contributions") disc("""Thanks to everybody who has contributed to the open-source toolkit in the run-up to the 2.0 release, whether by reporting bugs, sending patches, or contributing to the reportlab-users mailing list. Thanks especially to the following people, who contributed code that has gone into 2.0: Andre Reitz, Max M, Albertas Agejevas, T Blatter, Ron Peleg, Gary Poster, Steve Halasz, Andrew Mercer, Paul McNett, Chad Miller. """) todo("""If we missed you, please let us know!""") heading3("Unicode support") disc(""" This is the Big One, and the reason some apps may break. You must now pass in text either in UTF-8 or as unicode string objects. The library will handle everything to do with output encoding. There is more information on this below. Since this is the biggest change, we'll start by reviewing how it worked in the past.""") disc(""" In ReportLab 1.x, any string input you passed to our APIs was supposed to be in the same encoding as the font you selected for output. If using the default fonts in Acrobat Reader (Helvetica/Times/Courier), you would have implicitly used WinAnsi encoding, which is almost exactly the same as Latin-1. However, if using TrueType fonts, you would have been using UTF-8.""") disc("""For Asian fonts, you had a wide choice of encodings but had to specify which one (e.g Shift-JIS or EUC for Japanese). This state of affairs meant that you had to make sure that every piece of text input was in the same encoding as the font used to display it.""") disc("""Input text encoding is UTF-8 or Python Unicode strings""") disc(""" Any text you pass to a canvas API (drawString etc.), Paragraph or other flowable constructor, into a table cell, or as an attribute of a graphic (e.g. chart.title.text), is supposed to be unicode. If you use a traditional Python string, it is assumed to be UTF-8. If you pass a Unicode object, we know it's unicode.""", style=indent1_style) disc("""Font encodings""") disc(""" Fonts still work in different ways, and the built-in ones will still use WinAnsi or MacRoman internally while TrueType will use UTF-8. However, the library hides this from you; it converts as it writes out the PDF file. As before, it's still your job to make sure the font you use has the characters you need, or you may get either a traceback or a visible error character.""",style=indent1_style) disc("""Asian CID fonts""") disc(""" You no longer need to specify the encoding for the built-in Asian fonts, just the face name. ReportLab knows about the standard fonts in Adobe's Asian Language Packs """, style=indent1_style) disc("""Asian Truetype fonts""") disc(""" The standard Truetype fonts differ slightly for Asian languages (e.g msmincho.ttc). These can now be read and used, albeit somewhat inefficiently. """, style=indent1_style) disc("""Asian word wrapping""") disc(""" Previously we could display strings in Asian languages, but could not properly wrap paragraphs as there are no gaps between the words. We now have a basic word wrapping algorithm. """, style=indent1_style) disc("""unichar tag""") disc(""" A convenience tag, <unichar/> has also been added. You can now do or <unichar name='LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS'/> and get a lowercase u umlaut. Names should be those in the Unicode Character Database. """, style=indent1_style) disc("""Accents, greeks and symbols""") disc(""" The correct way to refer to all non-ASCII characters is to use their unicode representation. This can be literal Unicode or UTF-8. Special symbols and Greek letters (collectively, "greeks") inserted in paragraphs using the greek tag (e.g. <greek>lambda</greek>) or using the entity references (e.g. λ) are now processed in a different way than in version 1.""", style=indent1_style) disc(""" Previously, these were always rendered using the Zapf Dingbats font. Now they are always output in the font you specified, unless that font does not support that character. If the font does not support the character, and the font you specified was an Adobe Type 1 font, Zapf Dingbats is used as a fallback. However, at present there is no fallback in the case of TTF fonts. Note that this means that documents that contain greeks and specify a TTF font may need changing to explicitly specify the font to use for the greek character, or you will see a black square in place of that character when you view your PDF output in Acrobat Reader. """, style=indent1_style) # Other New Features Section ####################### heading3("Other New Features") disc("""PDF""") disc("""Improved low-level annotation support for PDF "free text annotations" """, style=indent0_style) disc("""FreeTextAnnotation allows showing and hiding of an arbitrary PDF "form" (reusable chunk of PDF content) depending on whether the document is printed or viewed on-screen, or depending on whether the mouse is hovered over the content, etc. """, style=indent1_style) disc("""TTC font collection files are now readable" """, style=indent0_style) disc("""ReportLab now supports using TTF fonts packaged in .TTC files""", style=indent1_style) disc("""East Asian font support (CID and TTF)""", style=indent0_style) disc("""You no longer need to specify the encoding for the built-in Asian fonts, just the face name. ReportLab knows about the standard fonts in Adobe's Asian Language Packs. """, style=indent1_style) disc("""Native support for JPEG CMYK images""", style=indent0_style) disc("""ReportLab now takes advantage of PDF's native JPEG CMYK image support, so that JPEG CMYK images are no longer (lossily) converted to RGB format before including them in PDF.""", style=indent1_style) disc("""Platypus""") disc("""Link support in paragraphs""", style=indent0_style) disc(""" Platypus paragraphs can now contain link elements, which support both internal links to the same PDF document, links to other local PDF documents, and URL links to pages on the web. Some examples:""", style=indent1_style) disc("""Web links:""", style=indent1_style) disc("""<link href="http://www.reportlab.com/">ReportLab<link>""", style=styles['Link']) disc("""Internal link to current PDF document:""", style=indent1_style) disc("""<link href="summary">ReportLab<link>""", style=styles['Link']) disc("""External link to a PDF document on the local filesystem:""", style=indent1_style) disc("""<link href="pdf:C:/john/report.pdf">ReportLab<link>""", style=styles['Link']) disc("""Improved wrapping support""", style=indent0_style) disc("""Support for wrapping arbitrary sequence of flowables around an image, using reportlab.platypus.flowables.ImageAndFlowables (similar to ParagraphAndImage).""" ,style=indent1_style) disc("""KeepInFrame""", style=indent0_style) disc("""Sometimes the length of a piece of text you'd like to include in a fixed piece of page "real estate" is not guaranteed to be constrained to a fixed maximum length. In these cases, KeepInFrame allows you to specify an appropriate action to take when the text is too long for the space allocated for it. In particular, it can shrink the text to fit, mask (truncate) overflowing text, allow the text to overflow into the rest of the document, or raise an error.""",style=indent1_style) disc("""Improved convenience features for inserting unicode symbols and other characters """, style=indent0_style) disc(""" lets you conveniently insert unicode characters using the standard long name or code point. Characters inserted with the <greek> tags (e.g. lambda) or corresponding entity references (e.g. λ) support arbitrary fonts (rather than only Zapf Dingbats).""",style=indent1_style) disc("""Improvements to Legending""", style=indent0_style) disc("""Instead of manual placement, there is now a attachment point (N, S, E, W, etc.), so that the legend is always automatically positioned correctly relative to the chart. Swatches (the small sample squares of colour / pattern fill sometimes displayed in the legend) can now be automatically created from the graph data. Legends can now have automatically-computed totals (useful for financial applications).""",style=indent1_style) disc("""More and better ways to place piechart labels""", style=indent0_style) disc("""New smart algorithms for automatic pie chart label positioning have been added. You can now produce nice-looking labels without manual positioning even for awkward cases in big runs of charts.""",style=indent1_style) disc("""Adjustable piechart slice ordering""", style=indent0_style) disc("""For example. pie charts with lots of small slices can be configured to alternate thin and thick slices to help the lagel placememt algorithm work better.""",style=indent1_style) disc("""Improved spiderplots""", style=indent0_style) # Noteworthy bug fixes Section ####################### heading3("Noteworthy bug fixes") disc("""Fixes to TTF splitting (patch from Albertas Agejevas)""") disc("""This affected some documents using font subsetting""", style=indent0_style) disc("""Tables with spans improved splitting""") disc("""Splitting of tables across pages did not work correctly when the table had row/column spans""", style=indent0_style) disc("""Fix runtime error affecting keepWithNext""")