Printing with Lino¶
In a Lino application, printing means to produce a printable document and then show it in the client’s browser. Optionally you can decide to use printable documents in other ways than showing them to your browser, e.g. attach them to an email, or send them directly from the Lino server to a printer in a local area network.
- printable document¶
A file generated by Lino and delivered to the end user who will view it in their browser (or some external application if their browser is configured accordingly) and eventually print it out on their printer.
Read-only printable documents are typically in .pdf format.
- editable printable document¶
A printable document that is also editable.
Lino currently supports the file formats .odt, .doc and .rtf.
A Lino site that produces editable printable documents might also use WebDAV so that the users don’t need to save these files on their client machines.
- WebDAV¶
See
lino.core.site.Site.webdav_root.
Printable documents need to be built. Lino comes with a selection of build methods.
- build method¶
You can imagine a build method as a “driver” that generates (“builds”) printable documents.
Every build method uses its own type of print templates.
- print template¶
A file that serves as master document for building a printable document. Lino processes the template using a given build method, inserting data from the database and producing the printable document as a new file stored in a cache directory.
- local print template¶
A print template that has been modified by the server administrator or the site expert according to special needs of the site operator.
The easiest way to edit and manage your templates is to make your server’s local configuration directory accessible to your desktop computer and to use some file manager of your choice.