Develop Reference

Creating documents programmatically

I have an Android app that generates documents with each client's info based in a template, and that the client can sign. The signature is then jointed into the document, and the whole doc is converted to image and uploaded to a server.
Despite being converted to image, the objective is to be as similar as possible to the A4 format.
For this I use WebView, and then I convert it to Bitmap based on the width and height of an ScrollView.
For the signature I use Canvas.
But I'm not sure this approach is the best, as it is very difficult to simulate an A4 document. Depending on the device, the dimensions of the doc are not proportional and to be I would have to be adjusting based on each device display size. Because of that, this component of the app is not available in some devices, purposefully. But now we want to make it available to every device.
What approach do you recommend? Is there some way of develop one doc fits all with correct proportions and similar aspect?
Thanks in advance.

Print to a PDF file. You can use Flying Saucer for that, or similar libraries.
PDF is famous for sticking to definitions and is especially fitted to the needs of proper scaling and displaying.
You could even get away from the doc template and only use (X)HTML to design and fill the page.
Simply fill in some HTML, link an image (<img src='rel.jpg'>), send all that to FlyingSaucer, and you're done.

Multi-page application with corresponding pictures and text

I'm new to Java and Android. I have been trying for the past week to make an app for my phone. The app consists of 4 pages, which are diagrammed below:
Page 1: Contains a picture taking up the size of the screen. If I click on the picture it needs to go to "page 2".
Page 2: Consists of an icon on the left (say the flag for instance) followed by a text field (eg. USA). When "USA" strip is clicked it needs to go to page 3.
Page 3: Consists of text, picture and then more text from a string. This page needs to correspond to the strip clicked on in page 2 ("USA" in this example). There are also two buttons at the bottom of "page 3" and "page 4" which when pressed need to go to the corresponding page numbers.
Page 4: This page is displayed if the "More" button is pressed on "page 3".
I would like this phone to work on a minimum Android 2.2 or 2.3. All logos, pictures and string texts need to be locally available (resources folder) and not website based. I have tried all sorts of combinations of ListView's and buttons with OnClickListener's as well as toast screens. My limited knowledge of programming is frustrating.
My question is if there is a template around which will help me out with this app? Or if there are any web resources.

In Android, individual "pages" or "screens" can be implemented as Activitys. You need to extend the Activity class and add the components that you wish to display. Most of the layout can be done in an XML file. I strongly suggest that you google for a tutorial that illustrates the basics of Android programming. From there, you can start by creating an app with two pages. And then just keep adding a little bit at a time until you get the complete app that you want.

There some easy ways to do this. If you want to be backwards compatible to SDK 8 you can do this in two ways. You can use Fragments or Activities for each layout. If you implement fragments, I suggest reading http://developer.android.com/guide/components/fragments.html inside there you will about using the FragmentActivity instead of the Activity. Read this link http://developer.android.com/tools/extras/support-library.html as it will have the needed libraries to implement the Fragments in older versions of the SDK. It does looks like you looking for some navigation buttons that reside on the bottom of the layout. In order to fully implement a layout that has this view on the bottom of the screen in SDK 8, you will need to create your own View and place it on the bottom of the screen. RelativeLayout and alignParentBottom = "true" will accomplish this. There is also a way to do this using a ViewPager which will also work in the backwards compatibility requirements you have. I am sorry the amount of information I am throwing at you but I really would recommend looking into other questions posted by users on this topic. How to navigate to another page in android? for example. Good luck and everything you are looking for is able to be learned through a Google search. Maybe not all at once.

Printing data to a pre printed form/stationery

We have a requirement where we already have pre printed stationery and want user to put data in a HTML form and be able to print data on that form. Alignment/text size etc are very important since the pre-printed stationery already has boxes for each character. What could be a good way to achieve this in java? I have thinking of using jasper reports. Any other options? May be overlay image with text or something?
Also we might need to capability to print on plain paper in which case the boxes needs to be printed by our application and the form should match after the printed with the already printed blank stationery containing data.
Do we have some open source framework to do such stuff?

Jaspersoft reports -- http://sourceforge.net/projects/jasperreports/
You will then create XML templates, then you will be able to produce a report in PDF, HTML, CSV, XLS, TXT, RTF, and more. It has all the necessary options to customize the report. Used it before and recommend it.
You will create the templates with iReport then write the code for the engine to pass the data in different possible ways.
check http://www.jaspersoft.com/jasperreports
Edit:
You can have background images and overlay the boxes over it and set a limit on the max character size ... and many more
It is very powerful and gives you plenty of options
Here is one of iReport's tutorial for a background image http://ireport-tutorial.blogspot.com/2008/12/background-image-in-ireport.html

The big problem when printing form content that has been filled in electronically, is aligning it correctly on the pre-printed form. You may get content to align for one printer, but when you use another it is completely misaligned.
Fly Software have a form design product called InForm Designer that gets around the problem nicely by allowing users to specify and save vertical and horizontal offsets for printers. This ensures filled in form content is always aligned. I've tried it and it works perfectly. Take a look for yourself here...
http://www.flysoftware.com/products/inform_designer/overview.asp
It might be worth implementing a printer offset similar to InForm's in your own application (if possible).

Some things to think about.
First in terms of the web page, do you want use the stationery as the form layout?
Does it have to be exact?
Combed boxes (one for each character)
Do you want to show it like that on the web page, or deal with the combing later.
How are you going to deal with say a combed 6 digit number. Is this right aligned. What if they enter 7 digits. Same for text. what if it won't fit.
Font choices, we had a lot of fun with W...
How aligned do you want the character within the box, what font limitations does that imply, some of the auto magic software we looked at did crap like change the size of each character.
Combed editing is a nightmare, we display combed, but raise an edit surface the size of the full box on selection.
Another thing that might drive you barking mad, you find find small differences in the size and layout of the boxes, so they look okay from a distance but a column of boxes sort of shifts about by a pixel. Some of testing guys had to lend us their electron microscopes, so we could see how many ink molecules we were out by. :(
Expect to spend a lot of time in the UI side of things, and remember printed stationery changes, so giving yourself some sort of meta description of the form to start with will save you loads of trouble later on.

Managing text in Android application like in a eBook

I am developing an application which looks like an eBook reader, but its not exactly an eBook reader.
I have a huge text which is divided into various chapters. Now i want to present that text as a book, user should get a feel of reading an eBook which will have various features like GoTo, Search, Table of Contents and most importantly page curl transition between pages.
Now the problem is how to divide the whole content into number of pages. How can I know that, the number of characters that are going to fit into the screen( depending on the screen size and font size). I am totally confused on where to start and how to proceed.
Ultimately I am planning to develop an eBook Reader which will read only one book that is the text which I give.
Please let me know to achieve this, where to put page breaks and where to put the text( in database or resource file).

I'm trying to use Android TextSwitcher UI Component.
It automatically breaks the text according to the screen size. You can add some click listeners to traverse between pages..

Disabling table structure

I have a comprehensive web application with the use of lots of nested tables.
This app works fine for desktop version / view.
I am in the process of getting it setup for mobile view. Which is nearly done, BUT:
I am using JSP and java to, for example, retrieve search results. All of these are displayed in one row at a time.
I am not able to make this row fit onto a mobile screen, so what I am looking for is a JavaScript function to disable the table structer, and just show the columns underneath each other e.g. - comparable with opera mini MOBILE VIEW, which with the click of a button makes contect fit to any screen size. My web app works fine, except of some tables, such as search results. I do not want to change the JSP, not create new pages - that would be too much work !
All I want is to include a certain JavaScript file if the connected user comes via handheld device (which works) and disable the tables, or make it fit properly to the screen !!
I hope someone is able to come up with a solution, I have tried everything with CSS, and few JavaScript bits (which I am not so familiar with)
I have two seperate CSS files, depending on the medium u conenct with, it chooses the right one.
BUT HOW TO GET RID OF THE TABLE OVERFLOW / that the data will be displayed fine, without having to scroll left and right on a small device, which as u know is very annoying ;) !?!?!?
Best regards
ALEX

Try using an alternative stylesheet:
tr{display:block;}
td{display:inline-block;}
...this should allow cells to float inside their parent row.
Example: http://jsfiddle.net/doktormolle/nu62m/