Re: [Gnumed-devel] GNUmed forms printing

[Richard Terry]

Sebastian,

I'm not going to answer this from the technical point of view - others are far 
better at that than I, Horst and Ian for example I think have already outline 
this.

All I will say in my continued frustration is that form a front end/backend 
point of view is:
forms=script=pathology=pasthistory=familyhistory=immunization=letter=measurement=referral=allergy
 
bla bla bla.

It is all one and the same thing. The information is the same. They can be 
written the same,  edited the same, stored in the back end the same way.

You are trying to run before you can crawl. No point wasting time and energy 
on forms when you can't even collect clinical information with accuracy.

As to the outputted format - the beaurocrats will cripple you. In Australia 
most software companies have caved into the concept that they need different 
pre-printed forms for each discipline - eg pathology/radiology etc. and 
doctors are forever shoving different bits of paper into a printer.

Many years ago I simply decided that as all forms for all people were the same 
I'd print them all the same - ie they are all to some company or other, at 
some address/s, have patient info, clinical history, medications, copy to 
someone, contain instructions for the test, and a series of n(number) 
checkboxes to indicate specific needs (eg. Xray would have return Xray with 
patient, fax report bla bla). 

I'll try and find a pdf printer for windows and send one of my forms to that 
so you can see my simple result. Works brilliantly, and dosn't matter if Im 
doing a form for a cardiac investigation, or to a physiotherapist - all the 
same.

Don't think any of this will help you.

However, again, crawl before you walk - rethink the entire paradigm (You can 
have mine - I'll even help you).

Regards

Richard

On Monday 19 June 2006 19:43, Sebastian Hilbert wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Richard reminded me that there are talented people on this list with little
> chance to contribute.
>
> Today I need your help on finding the best way to handle forms in GNUmed.
> Here is what I had in mind.
>
> requirements:
> - cross platform, write once -deploy on many platforms
> - straight forward way of coming up and editing forms
> - seperate forms from content
> - ideally save a copy of a printed form
>
> problems:
> - I know no python standard for printing , cross platform that is
>
> possible solutions:
> - use LATEX for forms, create ps-files, feed them to the printer
> --> LATEX forms are hard to build and maintain ?
> - use reportlab, a python library, abstracted rml (xml) forms if you like,
> creates pdf
> - use the wxpython printing framework for drwaing text and graphics
>
> open issues:
> - how does one print the pdfs created by reportlab by using the wxpython
> framework? Is it possible to create an image from reportlab and feed it to
> the wxpython framework as a canvas ?
>
> Any help is appreciated including UML diagrams and moch up guis , sample
> code