Improved PDF Output (Demo Pack)

averma · August 16, 2013

WYSIWYG BIRT Design Experience 
Actuate Release 11 delivers true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) BIRT design experience to the BIRT Designer Professional. This enhancement greatly improves the productivity and report development efficiency of the BIRT developer and hence, brings about significant cost savings by lowering the development and maintenance costs. 
The BIRT developer does not need to modify his designs repeatedly so that the desired layout is achieved in all the various output formats. When the fixed layout preference is chosen, the layout of the BIRT output will be similar irrespective of the fact whether the output is viewed on the web or printed in the PDF format. 
 
Furthermore, the layout of the output will be consistent with the layout that the BIRT developer sees in the design pane of the designer. The developer can visualize the layout of the output within the designers layout pane and hence, can easily create the layout according to the needs of the consumers. This eliminates any iteration of complaints of layout inconsistencies and subsequent modifications between the users and the developers. Hence, the BIRT developer can deliver the appropriate layout the first time around. 
 
Attached BIRT design("My Customers.rptdesign") demonstrates consistent pagination between the HTML and PDF output formats. It displays the aggregate purchases made by customers grouped by country. Note that the page breaks occur at exactly the same points in the PDF and HTML formats. The BIRT developer had to simply choose the "Fixed" layout preference and this layout was achieved without requiring any customization or coding from the developer. 
 
View Live Example (HTML) 
View Live Example (PDF) 
Flash content in PDF output 
Actuate BIRT enables developers to create Flash content through out-of-the-box components like Flash charts/gadgets and custom Flash objects. Actuate Release 11 can now display those Flash components in PDF output. Hence, the BIRT developer can now use the same Flash components to create content for the web as well as for printed output in the PDF format. 
The business users can view the Flash objects, charts and gadgets in the PDF file and then print those Flash components contained in the PDF. The flash components will be exported as native flash content in the PDF output and hence, will provide the same interactivity as that seen when the Flash content is viewed on the web. The printed output will include any interactions or changes done by the user on the Flash object in the PDF document. 
Attached BIRT design ("Revenue Analysis.rptdesign") contains four different out-of-the-box Flash Visualizions which display Revenue trends based on various attributes. Export this design to PDF to experience native Flash content in the PDF format. You can interact with the Flash content in the exported PDF output and then print the PDF document containing all your interactions with the Flash objects. 
 
View Live Example (HTML) 
 
View Live Example (PDF) 
 
Improved PDF Output 
In Actuate Release 11, the PDF emitter has been enhanced to improve the layout, performance and flexibility in the PDF output format. The following are the enhancements in the PDF emitter:-

Consistent layout between PDF and HTML output format The layout seen in the PDF output format will be similar to that in the HTML layout when the Fixed layout preference is chosen. Additionally, the layout seen in the layout pane of the BIRT designer will be similar to the layout seen in the HTML and PDF layouts. Hence, the BIRT report developer does not need to make any tweaks in the BIRT design to ensure that the layout looks good in both the HTML and PDF output format. The developer can simply design their layout in the BIRT designer as per the requirements and then be confident that the PDF and HTML layout will be similar to what he/she sees in the designer pane. This enhancement significantly improves the report development experience and reduces much of the iterations between the business users and IT on resolving any layout discrepancies between the HTML and PDF output format.
Consistent pagination between PDF and HTML output format - The layout engine in the Fixed layout preference has been enhanced to ensure that the pagination scheme is consistent between the HTML and PDF output formats. The business user will see exactly the same number of pages in those output formats and hence, will be able to correlate data between the Web layout and the PDF file produced from that report.
Improved performance and smaller PDF file size The performance of the PDF emitter has been optimized to produce smaller PDF files quicker than before. This improvement is brought about by compressing the PDF file size, enhancing the style resolution algorithm and reusing images in the PDF file.
Flexible Export to PDF options The business user can optimize the PDF output based on the type of content exported to PDF and their business requirements. The user can use the appropriate settings mentioned below to maintain the quality of the PDF output, reduce the PDF file size and improve the quality of the printout of the PDF file. 
o Embed fonts The business user can choose to disable embedding of fonts to optimize the PDF file size. This option is especially useful when the users are looking for smaller PDF files and/or there is a lot of content in the BIRT report. 
o Font substitution This option adds the ability to use an alternative font if the specified font is not avail. If the PDF viewer is not able to find the font in the client computer, it will use an alternative font instead of displaying white space. This maintains the quality of the PDF output. 
o Chart DPI This option is used to control the fidelity of printed output. The printed output typically requires a much larger DPI than that to display on the computer screen. On the other hand, larger DPI means a larger PDF files size. This user can now choose the optimum chart DPI to maintain the balance between the quality of printed output and the size of the PDF file.
High fidelity and scalable vector images for charts and SVG images Actuate Release 11 can produce high-quality images for charts and SVG images in the PDF output format. This is achieved by displaying vector graphics using PDF commands when the output option in a chart is set to SVG or an SVG image is present in the report design.
Display Native Flash content in PDF output Actuate Release 11 can display Flash content in the PDF format. Business users can experience all the functionality and interactivity of Flash in the PDF output format. They can interact with the Flash objects just as they would do them on the web. Furthermore, the PDF printout would include any interactions or modifications done by the user. This provides the complete Web experience for Flash objects in the PDF output format.

Attached Sales Invoice report demonstrates the identical layouts in the PDF and HTML outputs in the "Fixed" layout scheme. This BIRT report displays the exact dimensions of the table columns as set in the table in the BIRT design. The BIRT developer can drag the columns vertically and horizontally to adjust the column heights and widths respectively. These changes are reflected in all the output formats, thus delivering a true WYSIWYG design experience to the BIRT developer. 
 
View Live Example (HTML) 
 
View Live Example (PDF) 
 
Ashwini Verma

Improved PDF Output (Demo Pack)

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