RTF documents as templates

[Jan Schenkel]

--- On Mon, 11/29/10, Andrew Kluthe <andrew at rjdfarm.com> wrote:
> 
> I have been trying to implement the methods described in
> revUp's articles on
> the subject. The trouble that I am having is that some of
> the
> [[Placeholders]] don't get changed at all. Some are
> replaced and some are
> left as placeholders.
> 
> I am getting so aggravated with not having a templatable
> reporting method
> for printing out Lease Contracts. The user needs to be able
> to customize the
> lease contract to fit their needs and my rev program fills
> out the variable
> data and spits it out as a pdf or word doc.
> 
> I've looked into other reporting engines and the closest
> thing I found to
> what I need is Docmosis and it only interfaces with java. I
> wish it
> interfaced through a command line or that I had Java
> knowledge so I could
> build one.
> 

Hi Andrew,

I had a quick look at Docmosis - looks pretty cool, but a tad complicated to implement. Not only the syntax for the template writer, but also the architecture with converters seemed a bit involved (and I have been around the block in Java so to speak).

Back to the [[Placeholder]] issue, I can think of a few reasons this would fail:
- typos are obviously a problem (and I've made more than my fair share of those so no need to feel frustrated)
- older versions of Word may mangle parts of the RTF unless you 'Save as' to a new RTF file
- your variable names still have to abide the rules, and be available in the context where you call the 'merge' function

Can you give us a concrete example where it fails?
- the RTF template file
- the script itself

I'm sure we can help you figure out a solution.

Jan Schenkel.
=====
Quartam Reports & PDF Library for LiveCode
www.quartam.com

=====
"As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time."  (La Rochefoucauld)