Benefits of Phoca PDF ?

[Christos]

Can somebody please explain to me what the benefits of using Phoca PDF are, over using the built-in PDF feature of Joomla! 1.5?

From my humble background of being fairly new to Joomla!, I know that the application will create PDF files of articules already - why do I need a third party module to do this as this well?

I know that there are limitations with the PDF files produced by Joomla! by default - e.g. the layouts look atrocious when tables are used in the article - but does Phoca PDF get around these problems?

[Jan]

Hi, differences:

::in Phoca PDF you can:
- upload and set your font: (for content, header, footer)
- set margin left, top, right, bottom
- set different page format: A4, A5, letter,...
- set page orientation
- set font color
- set font height ratio
- display/hide header
- display/hide header line
- set own header text
- set alignment of header
- set font size, style, color for header
- set background color, margin for header, etc.
- display/hide footer
- display/hide footer line
- set own footer text
- set alignment of footer
- set font size, style, color for footer
- set background color, margin for footer, etc.

You can set destination of created document (PDF will be rendered in browser, as download, in popup), you can set pdf name, image scale.
You can hide plugin code in content, you can hide images in content.

Phoca PDF works with IE (the standard PDF doesn't )
Phoca PDF uses up-to-date TCPDF library, so rendering of e.g. tables or images displays better outcome as obsolete library does.
For Phoca PDF there can be created plugin for some 3pd component, e.g. see: Phoca PDF Restaurant Menu Plugin:

https://www.phoca.cz/restaurantmenudemo/en/daily-menu

etc.

Jan

[Christos]

Thanks for the very detailed reply Jan.

I've checked out the demo of the restaurant menu and think it looks great - much better than how I imagine the inbuilt PDF generator would have rendered it.

Where can I find out how to do all of this stuff with Phoca PDF? The Documentation link on the website provides details of Installation and Features, but I cant find details of configuration?

[Jan]

Hi, after installation of component, font and plugin just go to plugins and you can see the parameters there

https://www.phoca.cz/documentation/categ ... -component

https://www.phoca.cz/documents/48-phoca- ... ent-plugin

[Frieki]

Hi,
There are a lot of features - but unfortunately also a lot of problems :

Phoca PDf - at least in my case -

* doesn´t reproduce the title of the article,
* does`t reproduce the author of the article,
* miniaturizes the images and centers them - loosing any kind of format,
* destroys tables
* ignores {tabs} of Mootools.

So, from my point of view, at this stage there is a lot of things to improve.

[Jan]

Hi,

* doesn´t reproduce the title of the article

Phoca PDF display title of article if you will not set your own header - new tag {} will be added in future version to display it anywhere in header

* does`t reproduce the author of the article

Phoca PDF display author of article if you will not set your own header - new tag {} will be added in future version to display it anywhere in header

* miniaturizes the images and centers them - loosing any kind of format

You can set if the images will be resized or not in parameters

* destroys tables
If you are using html correctly tables, they should be rendered OK, see e.g.:
https://www.phoca.cz/demo/phocapdf-demo
or see this site, which is built only from tables:
https://www.phoca.cz/restaurantmenudemo/en/wine-list

The winelist includes tables, colspans, rowspans, etc

* ignores {tabs} of Mootools.
You should know that PDF is not HTML and have some limits. PDF is ready for printing documents, so you cannot display there html or javascript features. So in some features PDF will be still limited against html/css/javascript site like on paper sheet you cannot click on urls e.g.


Jan