User Guide Chapter 1 Introduction

• showBoundary: set to non-zero to get boundary lines drawn.

• ZLIB_WARNINGS: set to non-zero to get warnings if the Python compression extension is not
found.
• pageComression: set to non-zero to try and get compressed PDF.
• allowtableBoundsErrors: set to 0 to force an error on very large Platypus table elements
• emptyTableAction: Controls behaviour for empty tables, can be 'error' (default), 'indicate' or
'ignore'.

1.9 Learning More About Python

If you are a total beginner to Python, you should check out one or more from the growing number of
resources on Python programming. The following are freely available on the web:
• Python Documentation. A list of documentation on the Python.org web site.
http://www.python.org/doc/
• Python Tutorial. The official Python Tutorial , originally written by Guido van Rossum
himself. http://docs.python.org/tutorial/
• Learning to Program. A tutorial on programming by Alan Gauld. Has a heavy emphasis on
Python, but also uses other languages.
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/
• Instant Python. A 6-page minimal crash course by Magnus Lie Hetland.
http://www.hetland.org/python/instant-python.php
• Dive Into Python. A free Python tutorial for experienced programmers.
http://www.diveintopython.net/

1.10 Goals for the 3.x release series

ReportLab 3.0 has been produced to help in the migration to Python 3.x. Python 3.x will be standard in future
Ubuntu releases and is gaining popularity, and a good proportion of major Python packages now run on
Python 3.
• Python 3.x compatibility. A single line of code should run on 2.7 and 3.3
• __init__.py restricts to 2.7 or >=3.3
• __init__.py allow the import of on optional reportlab.local_rl_mods to allow monkey patching
etc.
• rl_config now imports rl_settings & optionally local_rl_settings
• ReportLab C extensions now live inside reportlab; _rl_accel is no longer required. All _rl_accel
imports now pass through reportlab.lib.rl_accel
• xmllib is gone, alongside the paraparser stuff that caused issues in favour of HTMLParser.
• some obsolete C extensions (sgmlop and pyHnj) are gone
• Improved support for multi-threaded systems to the _rl_accel C extension module.
• Removed reportlab/lib/ para.py & pycanvas.py. These would better belong in third party
packages, which can make use of the monkeypatching feature above.
• Add ability to output greyscale and 1-bit PIL images without conversion to RGB. (contributed
by Matthew Duggan)
• highlight annotation (contributed by Ben Echols)
• full compliance with pip, easy_install, wheels etc
Detailed release notes are available at
http://www.reportlab.com/software/documentation/relnotes/30/

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