[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Proposal: Server Managed Print Templates

[Bill Erickson]

On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 1:56 PM Galen Charlton <gmc at equinoxinitiative.org>
wrote:

> Hi Bill,
>
> On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 12:12 PM Bill Erickson <berickxx at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have jotted some notes here:
> >
> > https://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=dev:server_print_templates
> >
> > I would love hear feedback.  If it the idea holds water, I'll open an LP.
>
> I think the general idea makes good sense.  Some specific thoughts that
> occur to me:
>
> - Consistent formatting of dates and times should be considered, perhaps
> by adding a helper function
>
- What are your thoughts on having (selected) additional helper functions
> be available to do things like fetch OU names and addresses?  On the one
> hand, this could reduce the need to touch Angular[JS] code to add new
> fields to a given printout and might add some useful consistency with
> what's available to A/T templates. On the other hand, for the sake of
> responsiveness I could see an argument for making the client completely
> responsible for supplying all necessary data.
>

I expect some data will be so ubiquitous (org units, date formats, etc.)
we'll want to load them on child_init and add them to the environment
and/or expose via helper function.

I can also imagine a helper function that, say, acts as a pcrud
pass-through to fetch data from the database, but my preference would be
not to rely on that for stock receipt templates.


> - It occurs to me that this could readily become a basis for printing
> sheets of barcodes and labels, though if we go down that path, it may be
> necessary to teach it how to emit PDFs that are capable of having a block
> to print precisely positioned on the resulting sheet of paper.
>

Yeah, that'd be cool.


> - Automatic migration of existing templates is probably not possible, but
> _something_ to help admins keep track of how far along they are with the
> migration would be helpful.
>

True, I'll give that some thought.

-b
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