Author Topic: Alternate to EA RTF generator (Read 15323 times)

MV · « **on:** June 09, 2011, 05:31:59 pm »

Hi guys,

Can anyone suggest alternative of EA builtin document generator. It seems to have many limitations.

CheerS

Geert Bellekens · « **Reply #1 on:** June 09, 2011, 06:05:51 pm »

Write your own document generator?
That's what I do anyway.

There is another tool available, but I'm not convinced it is that much better: http://www.eadocx.com/

Geert

Martinigue · « **Reply #2 on:** June 09, 2011, 06:40:29 pm »

Frankly, what I saw at eadocx does not seem to me like things you cannot do with the built-in documentor...

Geert, as per your own generator - can we see some samples? I am tempted to write one for myself, but I do hesitate...I need a bit of a push, some samples to convince me that it is worth the effort. Eadocx fails at that ...

Quote

Write your own document generator?
That's what I do anyway.

There is another tool available, but I'm not convinced it is that much better: http://www.eadocx.com/

Geert

qwerty · « **Reply #3 on:** June 09, 2011, 07:13:14 pm »

Writing your own generator is quite something. I have written a LaTeX generator which takes more than 4000 LOC Perl. It takes a long time until you get the break even where development becomes less than what you save in time generating documents. But once you crossed the border, the saving is great. And LaTeX output looks really professional (unlike that RTF scrap). And because you can change the contents programmatically you can do almost anything.

q.

Geert Bellekens · « **Reply #4 on:** June 09, 2011, 07:20:48 pm »

Quote

Frankly, what I saw at eadocx does not seem to me like things you cannot do with the built-in documentor...

Geert, as per your own generator - can we see some samples? I am tempted to write one for myself, but I do hesitate...I need a bit of a push, some samples to convince me that it is worth the effort. Eadocx fails at that ...

Quote
Write your own document generator?
That's what I do anyway.

There is another tool available, but I'm not convinced it is that much better: http://www.eadocx.com/

Geert

I'm sorry, the document generator I wrote was for a client. The code belongs to that client and I'm not in a position to share that.
I do have plans to write another document generator as an open source project, but to do so I first need my add-in framework be a bit more complete.
Once the framework is done the generator should be a piece of cake 8-)

Geert

Martinigue · « **Reply #5 on:** June 09, 2011, 09:00:13 pm »

Geert, thanks for reply, much appreciated as well as your blog ( would like to see more of your UML metamodel musings, though .. :-) ).

qwerty, how about your Pearl masterpiece, is it under contract as well?

qwerty · « **Reply #6 on:** June 09, 2011, 09:13:20 pm »

Not really. The basic code is mine but large parts have been tuned for an individual customer. Honestly, it would not make much sense to publish that. Perl is a write-once language, though I tried to code it readable. But if you're interested, I have published an article here.

q.

jfzouain · « **Reply #7 on:** June 10, 2011, 03:58:13 am »

Hey Guys

What about using a Report Generator in the market to do all this.
I am familar with Reports Works and I am pretty sure this report generator can do this.

Had anyone here tried to generate the report through a report generator before.

Martinigue · « **Reply #8 on:** June 10, 2011, 06:15:39 am »

Never heard about Reports Works ...

Sunshine · « **Reply #9 on:** June 10, 2011, 07:03:12 am »

As an alternative if you use SQL Server for a repository you could consider using SQL Server Reporting Services. If you use SQL Server Express Edition is its free.

Geert Bellekens · « **Reply #10 on:** June 10, 2011, 03:27:05 pm »

Quote

Geert, thanks for reply, much appreciated as well as your blog ( would like to see more of your UML metamodel musings, though .. :-) ).

Thanks,

More of those are planned, but for me inspiration comes in waves. There's times that I write two or three posts a week, and then nothing for weeks on end.

Geert

Geert Bellekens · « **Reply #11 on:** June 10, 2011, 03:29:08 pm »

Quote

As an alternative if you use SQL Server for a repository you could consider using SQL Server Reporting Services. If you use SQL Server Express Edition is its free.

Reporting tools could be used to produce lists of elements and attributes, but they will never be able to generate something like a scope document since they are not able print diagrams.

Geert

Martinigue · « **Reply #12 on:** June 10, 2011, 04:15:22 pm »

When I think about it, the reporting / doc generation is not that much of an issue for me, but what I find a real nightmare is 'formatting or styling consistency' within this rtf thingy ...especially when you distribute your elements accross different paragraphs, to get consistent list of paragraph headings is a terrible job to do and with so many iterations ....

qwerty · « **Reply #13 on:** June 10, 2011, 05:50:37 pm »

That's exactly why I choose LaTeX since it takes that part completely. But ... see above.

q.

Ian E Mitchell · « **Reply #14 on:** June 10, 2011, 07:20:53 pm »

Geert - I know we showed you a very early prototype of eaDocX a year ago - things have moved on a lot!
We have a new Beta at http://www.eadocx.com- please have a look. We built-in many of the features you asked for last year, including making it a full EA Add-in.

Thanks
Ian Mitchell - eaDocX Development

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