Reportlab2

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Many new features have been added and numerous bugs have been fixed.

Thanks to everybody who has contributed to the open-source toolkit in
the run-up to the 2.5 release, whether by reporting bugs, sending patches,
or contributing to the reportlab-users mailing list.
Major contributors are credited in the user documentation.

* Support for colour separated PDF output and other optimisations and
features for high-quality printing, including enforcement of colour
models for CMYK, RGB, and "spot colours"
* Long table optimisations are now turned on by default. Previously,
documents with very long tables spanning many pages could take a long
time to create because we considered the whole table to work out row
and column sizes. A patch was submitted some time ago to fix this
controlled by a flag in the rl_config file, but this was set 'off'
for compatibility. Users are often not aware of this and we haven't
found any real-world cases where the new layout technique works badly,
so we are turning this behaviour on.
* New support for QR barcodes - [try our demo!](https://www.reportlab.com/demos/qr/)

PDF
* Colour separation and other enhancements for high-end print
* Python 2.7 support

Charts
* reportlab.graphics.charts.axes
* ValueAxis
* avoidBoundSpace - Space to allow above and below
* abf_ignore_zero - Set to True to make the avoidBoundFrac calculations treat zero as non-special
* keepTickLabelsInside - Ensure tick labels do not project beyond bounds of axis if true
* NormalDateXValueAxis
* specialTickClear - clear rather than delete close ticks when forced first/end dates
* AdjYValueAxis
* labelVOffset - add this to the labels
* reportlab.graphics.charts.barcharts
* BarChart
* categoryLabelBarSize - width to leave for a category label to go between categories
* categoryLabelBarOrder - where any label bar should appear first/last
* barRecord (advanced) - callable(bar,label=labelText,value=value,**kwds) to record bar information
* reportlab.graphics.charts.legends
* SubColProperty
* dx - x offset from default position
* dy - y offset from default position
* Legend
* swdx - x position adjustment for the swatch
* swdy - y position adjustment for the swatch
* reportlab.graphics.charts.piecharts
* Pie
* wedgeRecord (advanced) - callable(wedge,*args,**kwds)

* reportlab.graphics.charts.utils
* DrawTimeCollector - generic mechanism for collecting information about nodes at the time they are about to be drawn

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PDF
* lots of improvements and verbosity to error messages and the way they are handled.
* font size can now be specified in pixels
* unicode file names are now accepted

Platypus
* canvas auto cropmarks
* added support for styles h4-h6
* Improved support for onDraw and SimpleIndex
* Add support for index tableStyle
* Added an alphabetic grouping indexing class
* Added support for multi-level and alphabetical indexes
* Added support for an unlimited number of TOC levels with default styles
* Index entries can now be clickable.

Graphics
* Axes values can be reversible.
* Labels on the axes can now be drawn above or below the axes (hi or low).
* A per swatch callout is now allowed in the legend.
* A new anchroing mode for string 'numeric' that align numerical strings by their decimal place.
* Shapes have new attributes to specify if the shape should grow to take all canvas area (vertically or horizontally) or if the canvas should shrink to fit the shape size.
* color objects now have a clone method.
* colors module has a fade function that returns a list of different shades made up of one base colour.
* added in support for Overprint/Opacity & Separated colours

Bugs fixes
* word counting in complex paragraphs has been fixed.
* SimpleIndex and TableOfContents bugs have been fixed.
* Fix for position of hyperlinks when crop marks are added.
* flowables.py: fix special case of doctemplate with no frames
* PDFFormXObject.format missing Resources bug patch from Scott Meyer
* KeepInFrame justification bug has been fixed.
* paragraph.py: fix linebreaking bug thanks to Roberto Alsina
* fix unicode/str issue bug found by Michael Egorov <michwillgmail.com>
* YCategoryAxis makeTickLabels fix contributed by Mike Folwell <mjfpearson.co.uk>
* pdfdoc.py: fix ro PDFDate contributed by Robert Alsina
* and others ..

Contributors
* PJACock's (<petermaubp.freeserve.co.uk>)
* Hans Brand
* Ian Stevens
* Yoann Roman <yroman-reportlabaltalang.com>
* Randolph Bentson
* Volker Haas
* Simon King
* Henning Vonbargen
* Michael Egorov <michwillgmail.com>
* Mike Folwell <mjfpearson.co.uk>
* Robert Alsina
* and more ...

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PDF
* Encryption support (see encrypt parameter on Canvas and BaseDocTemplate constructor)

Platypus
* TableOfContents - Creates clickable tables of contents
* Variable border padding for paragraphs (using the borderPadding style attribute)
* New programming Flowable, docAssert, used to assert expressions on wrap time.

Bug fixes
* Fixed old documentation and installation issues
* 610 - Fixed Image anchoring code to match documentation
* 704 - renderSVG groups problem
* 706 - rl_codecs.py now compatible with WordAxe
* and others...

Contributors
* Yoann Roman
* Dinu Gherman
* Dirk Holtwick
* Marcel Tromp
* Henning von Bargen
* Paul Barrass
* Adrian Klaver
* Hans Brand
* Ian Stevens

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PDF
* pdfmetrics: Added registerFontFamily function
* Basic support for pdf document viewer preferences (e.g.: fullscreen).

Platypus
* Paragraph <img> tag support for inline images.
* Paragraph autoleading support (helps with <img> tags).
* Platypus doctemplate programming support.
* Support for tables with non-uniform row length.

Graphics
* RGBA image support for suitable bitmap types.
* LTO labelling barcode.

And many bugfixes...

Contributors
* Matt Folwell
* Jerome Alet
* Harald Armin Massa
* kevinbooksys.com
* Sebastian Ware
* Martin Tate
* Wietse Jacobs
* Christian Jacobs
* Volker Haas
* Dinu Gherman
* Dirk Datzert
* Yuan Hong
* Ilpo Nyyss�nen
* Thomas Heller
* Gael Chardon
* Alex Smishlajev
* Martin Loewis
* Dirk Holtwick
* Philippe Makowskic
* Ian Sparks
* Albertas Agejevas
* Gary Poster
* Martin Zohlhuber
* Francesco Pierfederici
* michaelstroeder.com
* Derik Barclay
* Publio da Costa Melo
* Jon Dyte
* David Horkoff
* picodelloyahoo.it
* R�diger M�hl
* Paul Winkler
* Bernhard Herzog
* Alex Martelli
* Stuart Bishop
* Gael Chardon

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Contributors
* Ilpo Nyyss�nen
* Thomas Heller
* Gael Chardon
* Alex Smishlajev
* Martin Loewis
* Dirk Holtwick
* Philippe Makowskic
* Dinu Gherman
* Ian Sparks

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Contributions
* Andre Reitz
* Max M
* Albertas Agejevas
* T Blatter
* Ron Peleg
* Gary Poster
* Steve Halasz
* Andrew Mercer
* Paul McNett
* Chad Miller

Unicode support

This is the Big One, and the reason some apps may break. You must now pass in
text either in UTF-8 or as unicode string objects. The library will handle
everything to do with output encoding. There is more information on this below.

Since this is the biggest change, we'll start by reviewing how it worked in the
past. In ReportLab 1.x, any string input you passed to our APIs was supposed to
be in the same encoding as the font you selected for output. If using the
default fonts in Acrobat Reader (Helvetica/Times/Courier), you would have
implicitly used WinAnsi encoding, which is almost exactly the same as Latin-1.
However, if using TrueType fonts, you would have been using UTF-8. For Asian
fonts, you had a wide choice of encodings but had to specify which one (e.g
Shift-JIS or EUC for Japanese). This state of affairs meant that you had to
make sure that every piece of text input was in the same encoding as the font
used to display it.

With ReportLab 2, none of that necessary. Instead:

Here is what's different now:

Input text encoding is UTF-8 or Python Unicode strings

Any text you pass to a canvas API (drawString etc.), Paragraph or other
flowable constructor, into a table cell, or as an attribute of a graphic (e.g.
chart.title.text), is supposed to be unicode. If you use a traditional Python
string, it is assumed to be UTF-8. If you pass a Unicode object, we know it's
unicode.

Font encodings

Fonts still work in different ways, and the built-in ones will still use
WinAnsi or MacRoman internally while TrueType will use UTF-8. However, the
library hides this from you; it converts as it writes out the PDF file. As
before, it's still your job to make sure the font you use has the characters
you need, or you may get either a traceback or a visible error character.
Asian CID fonts

You no longer need to specify the encoding for the built-in Asian fonts,
just the face name. ReportLab knows about the standard fonts in Adobe's Asian
Language Packs.

Asian Truetype fonts

The standard Truetype fonts differ slightly for Asian languages (e.g
msmincho.ttc). These can now be read and used, albeit somewhat inefficiently.
Asian word wrapping

Previously we could display strings in Asian languages, but could not
properly wrap paragraphs as there are no gaps between the words. We now have a
basic word wrapping algorithm.

unichar tag

A convenience tag, <unichar/> has also been added. You can now do <unichar
code="0xfc"/> or <unichar name='LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS'/> and get
a lowercase u umlaut. Names should be those in the Unicode Character Database.
Accents, Greeks and symbols

The correct way to refer to all non-ASCII characters is to use their
unicode representation. This can be literal Unicode or UTF-8. Special symbols
and Greek letters (collectively, "greeks") inserted in paragraphs using the
greek tag (e.g. <greek>lambda</greek>) or using the entity references (e.g.
&lambda;) are now processed in a different way than in version 1. Previously,
these were always rendered using the Zapf Dingbats font. Now they are always
output in the font you specified, unless that font does not support that
character. If the font does not support the character, and the font you
specified was an Adobe Type 1 font, Zapf Dingbats is used as a fallback.
However, at present there is no fallback in the case of TTF fonts. Note that
this means that documents that contain greeks and specify a TTF font may need
changing to explicitly specify the font to use for the greek character, or you
will see a black square in place of that character when you view your PDF
output in Acrobat Reader.

Other New Features

PDF

* Improved low-level annotation support for PDF "free text annotations"
FreeTextAnnotation allows showing and hiding of an arbitrary PDF "form"
(reusable chunk of PDF content) depending on whether the document is printed or
viewed on-screen, or depending on whether the mouse is hovered over the
content, etc.
* TTC font collection files are now readable:
ReportLab now supports using TTF fonts packaged in .TTC files
* East Asian font support (CID and TTF):
You no longer need to specify the encoding for the built-in Asian
fonts, just the face name. ReportLab knows about the standard fonts in Adobe's
Asian Language Packs.
* Native support for JPEG CMYK images:
ReportLab now takes advantage of PDF's native JPEG CMYK image support,
so that JPEG CMYK images are no longer (lossily) converted to RGB format before
including them in PDF.

Platypus

* Link support in paragraphs:
Platypus paragraphs can now contain link elements, which support both
internal links to the same PDF document, links to other local PDF documents,
and URL links to pages on the web. Some examples:

Web links::

<link href="http://www.reportlab.com/">ReportLab<link>

Internal link to current PDF document::

<link href="summary">ReportLab<link>

External link to a PDF document on the local filesystem::

<link href="pdf:c:/john/report.pdf">ReportLab<link>

* Improved wrapping support:
Support for wrapping arbitrary sequence of flowables around an image,
using reportlab.platypus.flowables.ImageAndFlowables (similar to
ParagraphAndImage).
* `KeepInFrame`:
Sometimes the length of a piece of text you'd like to include in a
fixed piece of page "real estate" is not guaranteed to be constrained to a
fixed maximum length. In these cases, KeepInFrame allows you to specify an
appropriate action to take when the text is too long for the space allocated
for it. In particular, it can shrink the text to fit, mask (truncate)
overflowing text, allow the text to overflow into the rest of the document, or
raise an error.
* Improved convenience features for inserting unicode symbols and other
characters:
`<unichar/>` lets you conveniently insert unicode characters using the
standard long name or code point. Characters inserted with the `<greek>` tags
(e.g. `<greek>lambda</greek>`) or corresponding entity references (e.g. &lambda;)
support arbitrary fonts (rather than only Zapf Dingbats).
* Table spans and splitting improved:
Cell spanning in tables used to go wrong sometimes when the table split
over a page. We believe this is improved, although there are so many table
features that it's hard to define correct behaviour in all cases.
* `KeepWithNext` improved:
Paragraph styles have long had an attribute keepWithNext, but this was
buggy when set to True. We believe this is fixed now. keepWithNext is important
for widows and orphans control; you typically set it to True on headings, to
ensure at least one paragraph appears after the heading and that you don't get
headings alone at the bottom of a column.

Graphics
* Barcodes:
The barcode package has been added to the standard reportlab
toolkit distribution (it used to live separately in our contributions area). It
has also seen fairly extensive reworking for production use in a recent
project. These changes include adding support for the standard European EAN
barcodes (EAN 8 and EAN13).
* Improvements to Legending:
Instead of manual placement, there is now a attachment point (N,
S, E, W, etc.), so that the legend is always automatically positioned correctly
relative to the chart. Swatches (the small sample squares of colour / pattern
fill sometimes displayed in the legend) can now be automatically created from
the graph data. Legends can now have automatically-computed totals (useful for
financial applications).
* More and better ways to place piechart labels:
New smart algorithms for automatic pie chart label positioning
have been added. You can now produce nice-looking labels without manual
positioning even for awkward cases in big runs of charts.
* Adjustable piechart slice ordering:
For example. pie charts with lots of small slices can be
configured to alternate thin and thick slices to help the label placement
algorithm work better.
* Improved spiderplots

Noteworthy bug fixes
* Fixes to TTF splitting (patch from Albertas Agejevas):
This affected some documents using font subsetting
* Tables with spans improved splitting:
Splitting of tables across pages did not work correctly when the table had
row/column spans
* Fix runtime error affecting keepWithNext


Older releases
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Please refer to subversion backlogs for a low level change list