So I’m digging into the specifics of the new textLayout API on Labs, and I’m wondering, after I’ve been able to get the text just-so on the screen, how this will translate to print?
Can Coldfusion, for instance – I’m referring to that because it’s Adobe’s pet server technology, not because I have any affection for it, or much knowledge of it – work with Text Layout Framework Markup? Or is there a way to export to XHTML, or any other commonly used format?
From the minimal docs available at this point, it seems that the formats available to export are Text Layout Framework Markup, plain text and FXG. To someone building a rich-text web-based editor in Flex that can print, are any of these technologies relevant?
It might be possible to do some kind of conversion from Text Layout Framework Markup to XHTML to PDF (up to this point, the HTML-to-PDF conversion part of it was what we were thinking of using, given that the only option available for editing was poor old TextField), but that would be like recording a beautiful grand piano using an 8-bit soundcard and then playing the recording through Yamaha monitors. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
If anyone reading this has any clues I’d be very grateful – this question is critical to whether or not the new technology will be useful in my current project. I’ve tried to post about this in the forums; unfortunately there seems to be a bug preventing me from posting (if anyone from Adobe is reading this, it asks me for a nickname then says it’s already taken – whatever I choose).
You could just take a client-side snapshot and print that…
You could write your own import-exportconfiguration like this:
var conf:ImportExportConfiguration = ImportExportConfiguration.defaultConfiguration;
conf.overrideIEInfo(“p”, ParagraphElement, fnImport, fnExport);
fnImport and fnExport are pointers to functions that do the real work:
public static function fnImport(textImporter:Object, tag:XML, parent:FlowElement):void {
}
public static function fnExport(textExporter:Object, p:ParagraphElement):XMLList {
}
In these function you can convert easily to other XML structures.
You can add your own markup the same way using
conf.addIEInfo(“myfield”, MyField, fnImport, fnExport);
Here I’ve modified the default configuration.
You could also create a new instance and pass it to the export() function of the TextFlow.