PDF report generator for teststand

[MichaelMC]

Why not make it possible for Teststand to generate reports in PDF format?

It would make it a lot easier to send a testreport of a specific board to people not connected to the actual tester.

Today we use XML but this requires the stylesheet to be present on the readers pc.

Graphs are also not showing correct unless you do a manual setup of the settings in Internet Explore.

PDF would make my life a lot simpler

/Michael

[Josh_W]

I agree this might be a useful feature.

For the moment, the easiest way to do this is to use a free pdf printer (I use Bullzip PDF printer), and then print your report.  If you want to automatically do this during execution, you can use one of the programmatic printing examples:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/epd/p/id/5889

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/epd/p/id/5890

[MichaelMC]

Thanks for your links to the examples, I will try it out.

Please don´t forget to give Kudos if you fing the idea usefull.

[pompapah]

Maybe I'm not reading this right - but why not just download a pdf generator from say Open Office?

or are you asking for a linked pdf generator off this site?

[MichaelMC]

No, I want to be able to choose PDF format for my report from within the "Configure Report Options" dialog.

[dug9000]

Have you tried using the xmlpack utility that comes with teststand? The purpose of xmlpack is to package up xml reports for redistributing them to others which sounds like what you are trying to do. I do agree that pdf would still be a nice option to have.

[MichaelMC]

No, haven't tried xmlpack. Sounds like it could help me for now, thanks!

[crelf]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by adding a PDF reporting option - PDF is a file format, not a formatting method.  So maybe what you want is to format your report using one of the existing methods, then saving it to a PDF file, right?

[MichaelMC]

I just want the report output to be a PDF file instead of a XML file.

[jpschoen]

Perhaps the PDF option should be in addition to the XML output. Other data collection systems may still need to access the XML files for data exchange while the PDF files are used for other reporting/sharing purposes. 

[EMR]

what about a slight twist on the idea, where in report configuration tab not only do you (1)choose format (XML/HTML/TXT/ETC)

but you can also (2) choose to 'auto package on write'  i.e when making 'stand alone xml', have it go to a seperate folder WITH it's current stylesheet file (rather than having to go through the tools menu later). Or if user choses 'PDF' option, or 'to gif' or something of that nature. that way packaging can be turned on or off and will save a second file to a seperate location.

in your sequence all you'd have to do, if all you want is packaged files, would be to delete the original report file and only keep the 'packaged one'.  Sure, we can all do it by hand with freeware, but if we're all doing it, why not just build it in?... just my 2cents