Print version of a view (pdf?)

[Niall Barr]

It would be good to be able export a view in a way that was suitable for good quality printing, so that a resume view created in Mahara could then be used to create a printed resume for posting. Export to pdf would also allow the resume to be e-mailed.

[François Marier (fmarier)]

Stacey, would you like to keep this allocated to you or should we unallocate it?

[François Marier (fmarier)]

There is an html2ps package in Debian that could be useful in producing a PDF...

[François Marier (fmarier)]

Gregor also suggests using eZ Components for this in bug 857368.

[Melissa Newman (melissa-l)]

Once the print css file is working correctly, the user can just select a PDF as the printer. If a large number of pages need to be exported, this would not be an option, but it will work for just a couple of pages at a time.

Although, the issue of printing a collection should be addressed. Right now a user has to print each individual page.

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

also see bug #1075358

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

and bug #692769

[Robert Lyon (robertl-9)]

Looking again at the print to pdf idea again.

I'm thinking that using wkhtmltopdf
http://wkhtmltopdf.org/

In combination with the php wrapper phpwkhtmltopdf
https://github.com/mikehaertl/phpwkhtmltopdf

PROS:
- Both are open source
- The pdf creation will be done by the underlying server so as not to overwork the mahara system.
- wkhtmltopdf has packages for debian / ubuntu / windows / osx
- wkhtmltopdf is an established system and is being actively worked on.
- allows pdf creation of a page generated from url or from html markup passed to it
- will allow a collection to be created as one pdf and have index page as first page (if static version is installed, see CONS)
- could be possible to create a resume pdf from all the pieces of information in the resume and profile sections.

CONS:
- need to install wkhtmltopdf separately from installing mahara (basic install no harder than installing something like elasticsearch)
- need to install the static version to get access to all the goodies like index page creation, adding hyperlinks in page creation etc. and this is a non trivial process

[Robert Lyon (robertl-9)]

Another option could be tcpdf http://www.tcpdf.org/ it too looks to be open source and a good thing about it is there is no need for underlying server installs.

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

I'd like to add that one positive side-benefit of print-to-PDF is that we could presumably use the same technique to generate thumbnails of users' pages.