What questions they dare to ask?

Shouldn’t some people really be ashamed of what questions they dare to ask?

It’s been a week I looked at the itext mailing list, and 2 mails really stood out to me because I could have a good laugh (shame on me for laughing)

Code WTF’s
1. someone trying to set a static final variable: http://itext-general.2136553.n4.nabble.com/dialog-to-select-pdf-to-import-td3779993.html

Noob Alert
2 .Do you know what a servlet is? A web application? Tomcat? If not, you’re building a house starting from the rooftop.
http://itext-general.2136553.n4.nabble.com/newbie-Web-page-to-call-itext-Hello-java-td3781877.html
( at least Steve warns/admits ‘newbie’ and he seems willing to learn. But he received a brilliant answer )

XMLWorker Documentation ( itextdoc )

As promised after the release of iText and XMLWorker, there would be a release of itextdoc. Our project to parse our own documentation for the XMLWorker with the XMLWorker.

The itextdoc maven plugin is now available from Maven Central. To use it in your build cycle of a project add

<plugin>
   <groupId>com.itextpdf.maven</groupId>
   <artifactId>itextdoc</artifactId>
   <version>0.1.0</version>
   <executions>
    <execution>
      <phase>package</phase>
      <goals>
         <goal>create</goal>
      </goals>
      <inherited>false</inherited>
    </execution> 
   </executions>
</plugin>

What does it do and how can you use it?

itextdoc transforms html to PDF with iText and XMLWorker. Optionally you can transform the html to a styled website but that’s still under construction.

By default the plugin looks for a folder itextdoc under the src folder. Easily configure another folder by adding a configuration to the executuion.

<configuration>
  <flatsite>true</flatsite> // enable generation of a site
  <site>true</site> // enable generation of a javascript driven site
  <src>src/doc</src> // change default source directory
  </configuration>

Currently only a doc.xml file is accepted as the xml file wherein you define the different html files (or one) and your CSS file.

The result is something like this. The initial documentation for itext doc, not styled with custom css.

To create a website use the site and flatsite configuration parameters. But the site generation is not yet fully functioning.

Where to request features and report bugs?

At sourceforge features, bugs.

Other links
check for latest version
Ohloh
iText

Note: don’t forget iText, XMLWorker are AGPL.

iText library developer guide

Where to start if you need to develop on the iText library itself.

First, you’ll have to check out the source code from subversion. The svn root holds a couple of things so for itext itself do

svn co https://itext.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/itext/trunk/itext itext

this will checkout the itext core trunk. If you’d like geospatial and richmedia packages you also need to checkout xtra trunk

svn co https://itext.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/itext/trunk/xtra xtra

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