Apache POI HWPF - Output a table to Microsoft Word - ms-word

I've been Googling for quite awhile and haven't found a definitive answer. Is it possible to output a table using Apache POI? It looks like it hasn't been implemented, since the main developer stopped working on it like 5 years ago.
Is there an open source alternative to POI that can do this?

I think you're right in that Apache POI is dead in the water. Clearly it wasn't glamourous enough.
The only alternative that I'm aware of is iText, which can generate RTF documents, which MS Word (and every other similar application) can read. It includes full table support.
And, of course, iText can generate PDF also.

If docx and java are both ok for you, try docx4j

Related

PDF generation from templated Word documents

I have a Word document(some template format) where it containing some placeholders for the data to be filled in and there are several Word documents like this which lies in some directory. When data comes I will be choosing different templates (based on some criteria) and fill the data and the documents have to be converted to PDF format.
I have been investigating Apache POI for this. If anyone has a good suggestion, it would be much appreciated.
As mbeckish mentioned you should indicate how you are going to run/automate this. For example is it one-off, run by hand or part of another program (and if so what programming languages do you use)?
If you are trying to automate it JODReports and Docmosis are tools that can use templates like you require and can produce PDF. JODReports is free. Docmosis is not but has several APIs. Please note I work for the company that develops Docmosis.
Hope that helps.
I've just uploaded this presentation, which presents three approaches for doing this.
Why not use any of existing PDF virtual printers?

Printed documentation from Sandcastle

We're using Sandcastle for conceptual documentation and have clients that we would like to give documentation to in a non-CHM or HTML form, i.e printed. It could be Word or PDF, something simple to attach to an email. The use case usually involves someone wanting to send along a topic.
The best we've been able to do is to print from the CHM viewer or to PDF from Chrome when viewing the HTML. These have issues in that they remove anchor element clicks, turn images black and white, etc.
There's a thread on the SHFB discussions on Codeplex stating that there isn't any known alternative - http://shfb.codeplex.com/discussions/260489. I'm re-posting the question here in hopes to get more input and visibility.
I had the same need some time ago and came to the conclusion that using a CHM to PDF converter is the best recourse. I could not find one that was open-source though many have trial versions available, and I only needed to convert one document so that served my needs at the time. Note that trial/demo versions typically add a watermark or a label blazoned across the page saying "unregistered version" or some such.
A general web search reveals quite a number of candidates: while I cannot vouch for any, here are a few that seem reputable: Universal Document Converter, Theta CHM To PDF Converter, Softany CHM to PDF Converter.
2014.07.16 Update
Per #J0e3gan's comment, here is a different online converter (limited to 100MB CHM input) that looks quite promising, though I have not yet had occasion to try it.

docx - markup / markup - docx conversion

I have to store some documents in the docx format, but can't stand using msword: I would like to edit some kind of plain text markup, anything except stuff based on XML (I don't like that either) and convert from/to that to/from docx.
Are there any options for this?
EDIT: since people think this is not programming related, I'll extend my question. What libraries do you suggest for writing a complete tex-docx/docx-tex converter?
If you're talking .net, I'd check out the OpenXML toolkit first. There are lots of "libraries" on the internet to do this, but they all seem to just be thin wrappers around the OpenXML stuff.
You might also check out
http://openxmldeveloper.org/
Aspose.Words for .NET allows you to create DOCX files from scratch using text or other content and then convert DOCX files to text etc. It doesn't require MS Office to be installed on the system. And the component is a simple .NET assembly with an easy to learn and implement API. Please try and see if it helps in your scenario.
Disclosure: I work as developer evangelist at Aspose.
You can try the DocxEditorKit http://java-sl.com/docx_editor_kit.html
Set the editor kit to JEditorPane, add styled text and store the document in docx format.

Can Crystal Reports generate documents in PDF/A file format?

We are looking for a solution to generate documents in PDF/A format for sharing and also archiving purpose.
I checked the description of ExportFormatType.PortableDocFormat, however it just say PDF file.
Can the Crystal Reports generate PDF/A compatible files?
I don't think you export directly to PDF/A. Instead, I recommend using Crystal to export to PDF, then find a third-party software to convert your PDF to PDF/A. It takes 1 extra step, but it will meet your needs.
I googled a bit and found http://www.abbyyusa.com/shop/pdftransformer/. I know nothing about this software, I'm just presenting it as an example. It costs 80USD, but you might be able to find a freeware alternative.
http://www.pdfa.org/doku.php is the offical homepage of PDF/A. You might find something useful there too.
According to this SAP community thread from a few days ago, it can't be done natively, although there was a third-party component mentioned there. I haven't tried it, so I have no idea if it works or not.

Is there an alternative to open-xml sdk to generate word documents

I'm trying to generate word documents using open xml sdk. When the documents are small this is no problem (and rather easy). When the documents become larger (+500 pages) I notice the peformance (duration, memory usage, ...) goes down significantly.
Googling this problem I came across some posts that point out the same problem. For excel there is a solution with spreadsheetgear.
I would like to know if there is a word alternative to this or if there are other solutions to generate word documents?
Thanks,
Jelle
I've written a blog post series on generating Open XML WordprocessingML documents. The approach that I take is that you create a template Word document, insert content controls, and then write XPath expressions in those content controls to specify the XML to pull from a source XML data file. I've also explored another approach where you write C# code in Open XML content controls. That approach also works.
http://ericwhite.com/blog/map/generating-open-xml-wordprocessingml-documents-blog-post-series/
-Eric
You might look at http://docx.codeplex.com/
On Java, you could use docx4j. If you were brave, you could create DLLs for it via IKVM...
I decided to go with Aspose Words. It is really fast and not very demanding on resources (CPU, memory). It has the disadvantage that it is quite expensive. I also investigated Softartisans Office writer. The posibilities are the same but due to fact that the company I'm currently working for already used other Aspose components we decided to go with Aspose Word.