I have created a XML file using R-exams out of just a single exercise to be imported to Moodle. I would like to view it before uploading it in the Moodle question bank. I tried to open it with Firefox and I can see some code but not the output and a message appear saying that the XML file does not seem to have a style sheet associated to it. Is there a way to find this style sheet and to see how the question comes out just using a browser like Firefox or Chrome?
To emulate how the R/exams exercises are converted to HTML by exams2moodle() and how Moodle displays mathematical content, it's best to use
exams2html(..., converter = "pandoc-mathjax")
In recent versions of R/exams the resulting HTML file then automatically loads the MathJax Javascript that enables correct rendering of mathematical content in all modern browsers (including Google Chrome). See also http://www.R-exams.org/tutorials/math/ for some general advice about math in HTML.
To the best of my knowledge there is no tool that would quickly display Moodle XML files in such a way that you can easily assess them.
Related
I am writing a Flutter web application that needs to have a customizable template for printing reports: inside the template there will be some placeholders that must be replaced with data at the moment of printing. The "printing" itself will be done by having the user download and open a PDF file, then print it through the browser, the OS or anything else, but that's beyond the scope, at the moment.
The default template would be something like this, where <BUYER_DATA> and <TRANSACTION_DATA> will be replaced with the data of the transaction the user is printing, along with some other "technical" tags (i.e., the page number and the pages count):
Header with site name
727 Chester Rd New Trafford, Stretford
Manchester
<BUYER_DATA>
01-12-2022 14:40
<TRANSACTION_DATA>
AppName - TM 2022
Page <PAGE_NO> of <PAGES_COUNT>
The user is allowed to edit this template in any aspect (boldness, size, colors, etc), provided that the tags related to the data are not removed from it.
So, to achieve this, I added a WYSIWYG html editor inside a page in order to save the template as an HTML-formatted string. And this works fine: only then I realized that the well-known flutter printing library doesn't support conversion from HTML directly to PDF on web, and all my plans began to crumble.
I then tried to discover if there's some other way to achieve the same by replacing the HTML template with something else, like markdown, but it seems that there's nothing that could help me.
The question is: anybody knows of a package capable of converting from HTML, markdown or such, directly into PDF?
I just need to know so I can stop googling around and decide to write my own parser for the HTML and convert it into a series of Widgets of the before-mentioned printing package.
In our application we are using Itext Pdf 5.5.3 library.
We have checked with some of the pdfs in which Checkboxes displayed correctly(check/uncheck) .
However there are some pdf with RadioBoxes and do not display radiobutton(on/off) correctly.
I also use this link to validate pdfs and java code
String[] values = form.getAppearanceStates("Checkbox");
return null values.
Also tried Itext RUPS and found that pdf which are working shows Form Field Names in RUPS Form Tab. And PDfs which are not working do not display form fields.
I tried generating pdf from word document and it doesn't display form fields in RUP , neither I can check/uncheck checkbox in Adobe Acrobat Reader.
What could be the solution to display radiobutton with check on / off ?
Edit -
I had created sample web application to reproduce the issue.
Please setup attached web application and let me know the fix for the issue.
Please download from this link
You have successfully discovered the difference between interactive PDF forms and "flat" PDF documents that look like a form to the human eye, but that aren't interactive forms.
To make the "flat" forms interactive, you need to open those flat documents in PDF editing software (e.g. Adobe Acrobat) and you need to add a form field manually.
You can ask Acrobat to guess where it should add fields, but Acrobat will be wrong in many cases for obvious reasons. You always need a human if you want it to be done correctly.
As for creating an interactive PDF from Word... Forget about it. Use OpenOffice or LibreOffice.
I have come across a scenario where I have to read html data from database and display it in pdf reports. This html data also contains table structure <table></table> tags and other html element inside it. Previously we used jasper reports for our reporting needs but recently as we came to know that the above functionality is not supported in jasper, I wanted to know which reporting tool can be used so that it can be incorporated with servoy. Does birt provide this functionality?
AFAIK none of the well-known reporting tools does support this, although in BIRT it works "somehow" - but not good enough to be usable.
The reason for this is simple, I think: A reporting tool would have to incorporate a complete browser engine like WebKit or others to achieve this, because it would have to "understand" the structure for its page-breaking algorithm.
Yes, BIRT has a text element where we can set the display type to HTML. If the html table is in a dataset field you will just have to include it in the expression of the text using "value-of" tag, something like this:
<VALUE-OF format="HTML">row["htmlTableField"]</VALUE-OF>
PDF format is taking such html elements into account, including most of simple style settings such background color, text-align, borders etc.
Usually the reports render just fine with html.
There are some tricks to displaying html correctly in BIRT.
You may use a Dynamic Text element and set to html or auto.
Here are some tricks to handling free form text..
Make sure your xml is valid, I recommend replacing line breaks or you may catch a scenario where the rptdocument will not export.
Also, if possible keep these in auto layout, when using run + render. The page breaks may actually be calculated once on run and again on render. You might experience breaking issues with fixed. The page may attempt to display all the html prior to breaking a page when using the RUN() phase, in web viewer or the rptdocument. Then when rendering to pdf the the breaks are applied differently, with fixed layout.
What I'd like to be able to do is download any web page, and be able to view it offline.
It seems like html WebKit views cannot be converted to PDFs (on the Mac, you could 'print' a PDF, but that isn't possible on iPhone?).
So, the only way is to save the actual resources - save the html, the step thru each image, css, js file and save it locally. Then maybe alter the urls within the code so they point to the right place...etc ...etc...
Is there a standard way to do this?
Or, is there an open source project (in any programming lang) which does this kind of thing?
There's an excellent webkit html to pdf converter appropriately called wkhtmltopdf. Given the reources available on the iphone and its toolkits, I think it'd be easy to compile a version for the i-Phone ('think' being the operative word). We've managed to use the tool in a Windows, Linux and Solaris environment with absolutely no bugs. Here's the link:
http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/
Are there any good alternatives to Adobe Acrobat for creating interactive PDFs? The terminology is a little fuzzy here - by interactive, I mean "able to be filled in", and not necessarily "scriptable". So this form would be for data collection, rather than report generation which seems to be the common scenario for pdf-related questions on SO.
The trick is that they need to be fillable using Adobe Reader. For those who have not experienced the many frustrations of Acrobat - by default, Reader cannot fill in a form unless it was created using Acrobat Pro >8.0 and has specifically enabled usage rights. That's fine and it basically works (except then Pro users can't save their data - WTF?).
Because I am getting frustrated, I would ideally like to avoid Adobe products altogether (that is on the design side, for the users Reader is still a necessity or I would just do it as a db-backed web form). I'm wondering if anyone has has good experiences with alternatives? Either software libraries or products?
Thanks!
EDIT - Thanks, matt b - I'd seen iText before but didn't know it could create forms. Unfortunately, it looks like Reader cannot save filled-in data to the forms generated by iText (or generated by OO Writer). I've got the nasty feeling that what I want is fundamentally impossible except using Adobe's own rights management tools. If there are other ideas. I'd love to hear them.
You can create fillable form PDFs using OpenOffice.org as well as LibreOffice.
To create the initial form elements in the *.odt documents, enable the View --> Toolbars --> Form Controls tools, which allow you to add clickable checkboxes + radiobuttons, fillable text fields, pushbuttons and some more to the page(s).
When you're finished with your document, use File --> Export as PDF with the checkbox Create PDF form enabled.
Now your PDF form will be editable (and saveable!) with any non-Adobe PDF viewer.
NOTE, however: Adobe uses an own proprietary way to create and fill PDF forms. Adobe Reader does only support to fill PDF forms which were created by an Adobe product (and which have been assigned 'extended rights' so Reader can indeed save the formdata alongside the document).
Adobe Reader will not work with PDF forms you created with OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice ('work' in the sense of: 'allows you to fill+save the form data'.). The technical mechanism behind this is that Adobe digitally sign their form documents with their own key (which is known to the Adobe Reader, and which you agreed to not reverse engineer when you accepted the Adobe Reader EULA...). --
This means:
Non-Adobe PDF Readers will not be able to 'fill+save' forms created with Adobe products (they can 'fill+print' them however).
Adobe PDF readers will refuse to 'fill+save' forms created with non-Adobe products (they will 'fill+print' them however).
The latter two points will be true for all the tools and utilities mentioned in the other answers to this question. If I'm mistaken here, please let me know in a comment...
iText is pretty much the standard in the java-world for generating PDF files programmatically. Perhaps it can also be used to create PDFs with forms in them as you would like?
The open source page layout tool Scribus has a bunch of features oriented to creating interactive PDF forms. I haven't personally used them, but they appear reasonably complete and are covered by the tutorial.
Scribus is worth knowing about if you ever need to do serious page layout in any case.
XSL FO is some thing we used to create PDF files out of existing form data. Unless you want the fillable pdf to be sent out the client, this is a valid option.
IText lets you create Annotations (there are essentially 3 types of 'interactive' components - forms (old style FDF and new XFA) and Annotations. Acrobat and lots of third party tools should let you modify the Annotations values.
There is also a DotNet version of IText called ISharp - both are freeand extremely powerful.
CutePDF Pro allows you to turn a PDF into an interactive form.
Foxit reader allows you to save any pdf with the filled in fields.
I recently dabbled with Scribus. I found it to be an excellent tool if one has enough time to configure and play around with it. I highly recommend it. Wufoo is also very good.
I am not a fan of Acrobat / Adobe. A software should make my life easier not challenge me at every step.
If you search the net with these keywords - FREE FORM CREATOR and you can add the word HTML5.
You will find an array of sites where you can log online and all your clients can have their separate login, fill in data and the form remains in the Cloud and declutter your hard drive. All stakeholders can access the form and edit at anytime. The account can be used as a folder for your business. These forms can be accessed on any device and any platform.
Many of these forms are HTML5 driven, they are so beautiful and fluid. Keep away from macros, they carry viruses.
www.homebasedofficeservices.com