Colony Print Infra-structure

Small web app for printing Colony-based documents.

This project includes two main components:

• The Web App end-point that provides XML to Binie conversion colony_print.controllers
• The structure conversion infra-structure (Visitors, AST, etc.) colony_print.printing

Features

• Cloud printing, with minimal configuration
• Multiple engine support (npcolony, gravo, text)
• XMPL to Binie conversion
• PDF generation with custom fonts and images
• GDI printing (Windows) via Colony NPAPI (npcolony)
• CUPS printing (Linux) via Colony NPAPI (npcolony)

Binie Specification

For a detailed understanding of the Binie file format used in this project, refer to the Binie File Format Specification. This document outlines the structure and organization of the Binie file format, which is essential for developing compatible applications and tools.

XMPL Specification

The XML Markup Language for Printing (XMPL) is integral to our document processing pipeline. For an in-depth understanding of the XMPL structure and its seamless convertibility to Binie, see the XMPL File Format Specification.

Installation

Pre-requisites

apt-get install gcc python-dev
pip install --upgrade appier netius pillow reportlab

Run Server

pip install colony_print
python -m colony_print.main

Run Node

pip install colony_print
BASE_URL=$BASE_URL \
SECRET_KEY=$SECRET_KEY \
NODE_ID=$NODE_ID \
NODE_NAME=$NODE_NAME \
NODE_LOCATION=$NODE_LOCATION \
python -m colony_print.node

Fonts

To be able to use new fonts (other than the ones provided by the system), one must install them into the /usr/share/fonts/truetype directory so they are exposed and ready to be used by the PDF generation infra-structure. For example, Calibri is one type of font that should be exported to a UNIX machine as many colony-generated documents use it.

Engines

There are currently three engines available for printing in Colony Print:

• npcolony - The Colony NPAPI engine, which is used for GDI printing on Windows and CUPS printing on Linux.
• gravo - Which allows engraving of text and signatures using Gravo Pilot.
• text - A simple virtual printer text engine that prints text to a simple plain text file and returns the file.

Development

To run a localhost development server, use the following commands:

PORT=8686 \
PYTHONPATH=$BASE_PATH/colony_print/src python \
$BASE_PATH/colony_print/src/colony_print/main.py

License

Colony Print Infra-structure is currently licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

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