Understanding the rendering engine.¶

Rendering¶

The velocity report plugin supports the rendering of your XHTML reports to a special pane (embedded in the viewer frame, in smart client) and to PDF.

• Rendering to the viewer is accomplished via "The Flying Saucer Project's" xhtmlrenderer library, included with the plugin as core-renderer.jar (in your velocityreport directory, within your plugins folder).
  More information can be gotten here: https://xhtmlrenderer.dev.java.net/
• Rendering to PDF is accomplished via iText, included with the plugin as iText-x.x.x.jar.
  More information about iText can be gotten here: http://itextpdf.com/

Please see Stack for more information about specific version of included libraries including core-renderer and iText.

The Rendering Process¶

Much like a webbrowser, xhtmlrenderer provides a means to parse and validate markup; apply styles to that markup and then render the result.
A specialized JPanel-derived swing component called an "FSScrollPane" provides the view of this rendering, and is the component that is embedded in the viewer frame provided by the plugin, in smart client.

The xhtmlrenderer also integrates iText and provides a means to render styled markup directly to PDF.