I will describe the advantages of using OpenDocument Format (ODF) as an intermediate format for embedding PDF report generation in software, and I introduce the implementation of a Scala program that is actually used in the process of generating PDF reports from Excel format in my company.
You may want to implement PDF report generation in your software, or you may want to generate an editable intermediate format from which you can edit and implement the PDF.
There are several options to do this, and my choice is the OpenDocument format (ODF), which is an international standard document format and the native format of the open source office software LibreOffice. ODF has several features that make it suitable for this kind of use.
- Simple XML Schema for easy to manipulate
- Many open source libraries for many programming languages
- PDF output can be done automatically with LibreOffice, an OSS office software.
In this talk, I will introduce the implementation of a report generation process that generates ODFs in an intermediate format, edits them in LibreOffice, and converts them to PDFs based on the manual test results of the software recorded in Excel format. This implementation is in Scala and uses the ODF manipulation library for Java.
About Naruhiko Ogasawara
Naruhiko Ogasawara is a member of LibreOffice Japanese team, which is the team to promote LibreOffice for Japanese speakers, and also the Document Foundation, which is the home organization of LibreOffice. He also loves using Ubuntu as the primary desktop.
He also works for third-party security verification company Shift Security, where he conducts technical research, develops internal tools, and launches new services.