Technologies

visionCATS’s report templating is based on standard Web technologies. The final report document is a PDF file, but it is first created as an HTML file.

HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) defines the content and basic structure of a template. For reference, please see W3Schools HTML.

CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) defines the presentation of a template. For reference, please see W3Schools CSS.

Note

You can check compatibility of CSS features with the version of Chromium displayed in About visionCATS. See EO.Pdf.

Colors

A list of color names is available on W3Schools HTML Color Names and also a color picker on W3Schools HTML Color Picker.

SCSS

SCSS (Sassy CSS) is a flavor of CSS using Sass preprocessor language to add features like variable. For reference, please see sass-lang.com.

JavaScript

JavaScript is the programming language of the templates. For reference, please see W3Schools JavaScript.

Note

You can check compatibility of JavaScript features with the version of Chromium displayed in About visionCATS. See EO.Pdf.

visionCATS’s report templates use several JavaScript libraries to make the templating possible.

Note

All the needed libraries are preinstalled with visionCATS.

Handlebars

Handlebars is a templating language, written in JavaScript, to be used in the HTML files. For reference, please see handlebarsjs.com.

linq.js

linq.js (LINQ for JavaScript) is a JavaScript version of LINQ (Language-Integrated Query). It permits to easily query data for advanced templating. For reference, please see captured page linq.js Reference.

D3.js

D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. For reference, please see d3js.org.

Flot (legacy)

Replaced in new templates by D3.js.

Flot is a pure JavaScript plotting library. For reference, please see flotcharts.org.

Other JavaScript libraries

Some other libraries are used, but most user created template would not use them directly.

• JQuery

• Moment.js

• Numeral.js

EO.Pdf

EO.Pdf is a .NET class library for rendering HTML to PDF. It use an embedded Chromium web browser (the base of Google Chrome web browser). Chromium is embedded in one or more process of eowp.exe.

Important

An error in the template could block the rendering to PDF. After 1 minutes, the rendering process will be stopped, and then you should look at the EO.Pdf log and try the report inside a web browser, to determine the error.

Warning

Some antivirus may block eowp.exe. Please add eowp.exe to your white list if it is happening.

The Chromium used by EO.Pdf is a recent one, and therefore most modern HTML features should be usable. The actual Chromium version is displayed in About visionCATS (and in report data, by the field ChromiumVersion of SoftwareData).