Go to
[install_path]\plugins\org.zend.php.debug.debugger.win32.x86_5.2.12.v20071210\resources\php5

In there, you will see your php.exe’s and your php.ini that the debugger uses. I just copied my php.ini there for it to work.

I want to give everyone a great big thanks for the valuable feedback and excellent encouragement!

I have recently been working with Zend_PDF to create PDF documents. One of the basic requirements for my project is the ability to center text within a screen. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed when I came to find out that Zend_Pdf doesn’t currently have any type of text layout support except for the exact position to place it.

I created a small extension to Zend_Pdf, and building off of an idea from FPDF, I created Zend_Pdf_Cell. Zend_Pdf_Cell is not currently supported by Zend, and is not officially in the Zend Framework, although I have posted my code for them to view it and give feedback (and hopefully have it incorporated into Zend Pdf). My first try I misunderstood parts of Zend_Pdf, but I have gone back and fixed it.

Features

These features have been most used by myself and mostly work.
* The ability to create a cell and place text in it.
* Specify the width and height of a cell
* Position a cell (one or more of these combined)
** To the left
** To the right
** At the bottom
** At the top
** Centered horizontally
** Centered vertically
* Align text within a cell
** Left
** Right
** Centered
** (To be done later) Justify
* Format different parts of the text in different fonts

Experimental

I just recently put these abilities in, so they may not fully work or even work properly.
* Create a border around the cell
* Word wrap text around the cell

Installation

To install this, just place the Cell.php file in Zend/Pdf/, then in your php file, just add:

include_once('Zend/Pdf/Cell.php');

Examples

The following is an example of how to use the Zend Pdf Cell:

pages[] =new Zend_Pdf_Page(Zend_Pdf_Page::SIZE_A4);
 $font=Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithName(Zend_Pdf_Font::FONT_TIMES_ITALIC);
 $pdf->pages[0]->setFont($font,12);
 //Creates a cell in the specified page
 $cell=new Zend_Pdf_Cell($pdf->pages[0]);

 //adds a cell in the upper left with "Hello World"
 $cell->addText("Hello World");
 $cell->write();

 //creates a cell in the center of the page
 //To do top and right, then you would
 //or together POSITION_RIGHT and
 //POSITION_TOP.
 $cell=new Zend_Pdf_Cell($pdf->pages[0],
                                    Zend_Pdf_Cell::POSITION_CENTER_X |
                                    Zend_Pdf_Cell::POSITION_CENTER_Y);
 //add a 1 pixel border
 $cell->setBorder(1);
 //align to the right
 $cell->addText("The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog",
                        Zend_Pdf_Cell::ALIGN_RIGHT);
 $cell->write();
?>

If you have any questions or wish to report problems, please use the comment box below. I would also like to hear if you have successfully implemented this!

Files

Cell.php – Zend Framework 1.0.*
Cell.php – Zend Framework 1.5.*
(Updated 1/12/08)
UTF character patch by Dominik

The following is a small sample code of how to use the cell:

	$pdf=new Zend_Pdf();
	$pdf->pages[] =new Zend_Pdf_Page(Zend_Pdf_Page::SIZE_A4);

        $font=Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithName(Zend_Pdf_Font::FONT_TIMES_ITALIC);
        $pdf->pages[0]->setFont($font,12);  

	//create and attach the cell to the first page, and center in the X and Y direction
        $cell=new Zend_Pdf_Cell($pdf->pages[0],Zend_Pdf_Cell::POSITION_CENTER_X | Zend_Pdf_Cell::POSITION_CENTER_Y);
	//align the text in the center
        $cell->addText("The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.",Zend_Pdf_Cell::ALIGN_CENTER);
        $cell->newLine();
	//change the font
        $cell->setFont(Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithName(Zend_Pdf_Font::FONT_TIMES_BOLD),28);
	//align this to the right
        $cell->addText("The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.",Zend_Pdf_Cell::ALIGN_RIGHT);
        $cell->newLine();
        $cell->setFont(Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithName(Zend_Pdf_Font::FONT_TIMES),10);
	//align this to the left
        $cell->addText("The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.",Zend_Pdf_Cell::ALIGN_LEFT);
        $cell->newLine();
        $cell->setFont(Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithName(Zend_Pdf_Font::FONT_TIMES_ITALIC),28);
        $cell->addText("The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.",Zend_Pdf_Cell::ALIGN_CENTER);
	//finally write the cell to the page.  Text will not show up unless you write to the page.
        $cell->write();
        //create a new cell and center on just the X coordinate
        $cell=new Zend_Pdf_Cell($pdf->pages[0],Zend_Pdf_Cell::POSITION_CENTER_X);
        $font=Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithName(Zend_Pdf_Font::FONT_HELVETICA);
        $cell->setPosition(Zend_Pdf_Cell::POSITION_TOP);
        $cell->addText("The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.");
        $cell->write();

        $cell=new Zend_Pdf_Cell($pdf->pages[0],Zend_Pdf_Cell::POSITION_RIGHT,$pdf->pages[0]->getWidth());
        $font=Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithName(Zend_Pdf_Font::FONT_COURIER);
        $cell->setPosition(Zend_Pdf_Cell::POSITION_BOTTOM);
        $cell->addText("The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.",Zend_Pdf_Cell::ALIGN_RIGHT);
        $cell->write();

	$pdf->save($this->uploadDir.'/TEST-CELL2.pdf');

I have attached not only the Cell patch, but also the diff of font resource files separately.

In the origional source for the font’s, we can see that they didn’t use the correct widths:

/* The glyph numbers assigned here are synthetic; they do not match the
*  actual glyph numbers used by the font. This is not a big deal though
*  since this data never makes it to the PDF file. It is only used
* internally for layout calculations.
*/

So when attempting to calculate things like a string width, you would get the wrong numbers. I looked up the numbers on Adobe’s Font and Type Technology Center particularly the Unix fonts. From there I generated a small PHP script that would output the ASCII value and the corresponding glyph width. Using these numbers, I updated the Zend font resource files which gives you the diff below. Because these fonts only contain width values for the ASCII numbers 32 – 251ish, those are all that were updated.

Zend Font Width Patch

Cell Patch

Here is a small list of the features of their code:

1. There is no object oriented code.
2. There are a _lot_ of includes
3. They use Smarty (or something built to feel like Smarty)
4. They don’t use camelCase
5. Many
   • Many
     • Many
       • Nested if’s

The author goes to show that most people tend to write the documentation because they want a thriving community and personal growth, but they don’t write for thrills or because they enjoy writing. Let me reemphisize that last point: People do not write the documentation because they enjoy writing. I have often been asked why I started to join the PHP team, and I can honestly say that it’s not because I enjoy writing. My father often asks why I contribute to something where I get no monetary reward. It is hard for him to understand how this is like community service, but on a different level. I joined the PHP documentation team to help out and give back to the community, to learn PHP on a more intimate level, and to hopefully be able to study the source and contribute to PHP 6 and beyond.

I enjoy working with the PHP team and have been slacking off in my contributions, but I hope to find some time to help out during the school year.

Anyone else interested?

Maybe ogo is the solution?

Yay me, first bug report fixed. More to come