United States State shapes for Office - ms-office

I want to create visuals along the lines of CNN's "red-state, blue-state" shadings of the states in the U.S. for my project. I'm planning to do something fancier than just shading the state's shape in a color. Are there open source libraries of state shapes/polygons (or - if not open source - others) that I can import into Word, Excel, etc. that I can use to show complicated graphs based on states?
I have Map Point, but haven't been able to figure out how to shade the states in a complex way.

you could try google charts, it looks like http://www.woot.com is doing something similar to what you need

Here is a good example using google maps... I've used code like that before.. perhaps from this exact example.
http://econym.org.uk/gmap/example_states2.htm
EDIT: you might want to consider converting the states.xml into JSON... it'll be smaller (136k of XML right now!) and should load faster in most browsers.

There might be a couple parts to the question you are asking, but to address the first part "Are there open source libraries of state shapes/polygons...", here's a resource to check out:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:SVG_maps_of_the_United_States
It's a list of various SVG(scalable vector graphics) files which can be imported into a number of applications. Basically a giant xml representation of lines and endpoints. This can be directly converted to XAML, if you're into a more programmatic way of charting(ie, C# w/ Silverlight).
However, to address the second part regarding MS Office, Visio can import SVG files for manipulation as well. I'm unsure what type of graphs you were looking for, but I hope this can assist in some small way on your path to awesomeness ;)

Related

How to specify the items in reference list using BibTeX? ChemPhysChem LaTeX requirement

I'm revising a manuscript for ChemPhysChem. They just provided a very simple templet here. However, I have some problems meeting the requirement:
Please follow our house style for references for example: [1] X. Y.
Name, A. B. Name, J. Abbr. 2016, 5, 111-120.
This kind of reference hides the title, and I can not find an existing style to meet the need.
I am using the following latex script:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[sorting=none, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{ref_r.bib}
What do I need to do to solve the problem? Do I really need to build a new .bst file? Could anyone share their experience on submitting manuscripts on ChemPhysChem using LaTeX?
Don't use biblatex for journal submissions unless your publisher explicitly states that they do accept it. While it is a nice and flexible tool, biblatex is not yet the standard.
Just follow the instructions from the template and use
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%alternatively you may use
\bibliographystyle{unsrt}
\bibliography{mymanuscript.bib}
%and send the .bib file along with your manuscript
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Don't worry if the resulting style might be a bit different from their requirement, they won't use it anyway but convert your source files with their pipeline.
I changed to my latex using BibTeX back, and built a cpc.bst file for ChemPhysChem using the following command with the help of the youtube video:
latex makebst
It would not be that hard to create the bibliography style file using the guide of the above-mentioned video.
And the result looks like
this.

FPC/Lazarus component like TImageList, but for generic files?

Just like TImageList contains a collection of images, is there a similar component for generic files?
I know I can embed files as resources, but I'd like the convenience of storing different groups of files in different "TFileList" components, and to be able to retrieve files by name or by their position in the list.
Extra points if such a component allowed some sort of design time preview of the file content (just like TImageList lets you see what each image looks like, at design time).
(I come from Delphi where I wrote my own component to do the above, but before I rewrite and port the property editor and all that to Lazarus, maybe there is already something that is tried and tested...)
Thanks!
You can use pre-defined lazarus TFPGList to specialize list of the type, that you want, for example - UTF8String
But, there's no T<>List as a component, only as object.
So, yes, this feature will be useful and i can implement, if have time,
also, there's a very limited RTTI, which has been updated only a few months ago, so you can access Methods and Properties now, so FP is more systemized, than delphi pascal, but also not so enterprise-developed, which limits it to implementations for common opensource and shareware project problems.
Nevertheless, it is more stable and supported, even my friends can contribute.

Named entity recognition - tagging tools

Does someone have a recommendation of tagging tool for NER types in raw text?
The input for the tool should be a library of text files(.txt simple format) , there should be a convenient UI for selecting words and set the tag/annotation fit to selection, the output should be structural representations of the tags(e.gs tart index , last index, tag in a JSON format)
Founderof LightTag here
We provide a super convenient interface to do span annotations such as named entity recognition, classifications and relationships.
You can work as one labeler or bring in a team and LightTag will disribute work between everyone automatically (no more selecting files and remembering what you labeled already) .
You can upload your own suggestions and let labelers use those, or use LightTags built in model.
Of course you can annotate at the character level and highlight subwords or multi word phrases.
You can try https://github.com/lasigeBioTM/MER (bash)
see the demo at http://labs.fc.ul.pt/mer/
Online tools:
I guess Dataturks' POS tool should work fine for your use case, you can just upload your data and specify the labels. The UI seems convenient enough.
Here is the link:
https://dataturks.com
It's an online tool, so you can work with multiple people to get the tagging done.
The exact output format you are looking for is not supported, but the format can easily be converted to what you are looking for, the output is like: word___LABEL word2___LABEL , so a simple 2-line script can convert it to start and end index.
Offline:
Another tool you can check out is prodigy, it's a downloadable software and does similar things. Just that you might be willing to pay for it upfront.
https://prodi.gy

How to print a multi-page map with data from excel, MapPoint and VBA maybe?

I have an excel file with information on my company's customers including addresses and latitude and longitude. I need to generate printed street maps showing a reasonable level of detail with pins showing the customers and bubbles displaying their info. Essentially I need to create something that looks like a Thomas Guide except with our customer info layered on to the street maps. I've been looking for DAYS and can't find any software to automate this process.
Currently I'm importing the data into Microsoft MapPoint, which does a fine job of generating the map with all necessary data. However MapPoint can only print what's currently displayed on the screen. So I'm stuck printing at a close zoom level, scrolling over, printing again, and continuing this process ad nauseum.
Is there maybe a way to automate this with VBA in MapPoint? I can find almost no info online about VBA for MapPoint.
Or maybe there's a piece of software out there that can do this at the push of a button. Printing a multi-page map of an area doesn't seem like that crazy of a demand.
Any help would be appreciated.
MapPoint's API is actually pretty well documented in the MapPoint help file, and most of the examples use VB6, which should be adaptable for VBA - you will need to add a reference to MapPoint's object model.
Yes you can automate the printing. Other approaches include copying to the clipboard; save to web page (and extract the Map's GIF image); or to use the GetPictureFromObject(). I recently wrote an article about using the latter from C# (it would be simpler from VB6 or VBA)
You could also print to a very large PDF, see the tips from this newsletter --
http://www.mp2kmag.com/update/mappoint.newsletter/2013-02-18/
Here's a direct link to the article --
http://www.mapforums.com/print-large-multiple-sheet-maps-any-printer-27603.html
Eric

Creating PDF Invoices - Are there any templating solutions? [closed]

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Our company is looking to integrate invoices into a new system we are developing.
We require a solution to create a layout of the invoice and then convert to pdf.
We have considered just laying out the invoice in html/css then converting to pdf.
We have also considered using SVG->PDf conversion.
Both of these solutions integrate well into our existing templating language used for our web application.
Historically we have been a Microsoft based business and used Crystal Reports for such a task but we are looking for an open source Linux solution for this project.
Does any one have any suggestions of an approach or technology we could use for such a task?
Try this... create a blank invoice with Word (or whatever you want) and save it as a PDF.
Then use a PDF library to modify the PDF (insert the text at particular coordinates). We do this in the Microsoft world and it is extremely easy.
The biggest benefit is that we can use our own tools to create and modify the template. If we want to add some static text, we just crank open Word, make the change and save it to a PDF file (that is being used as a template).
For Microsoft, we use iTextSharp which is actually a C# port of the original Java version of iText
Additionally...
You can use Adobe Acrobat to insert fields in the PDF (address, phone, invoice number, line item 1, line item 2, etc...) and then use iText/iTextSharp to populate these fields at run time.
This is, in more detail, what we do... and it is extremely easy.
The normal way is to install (La)TeX (probably already on the linux box) and run pdflatex to get the pdfs. You can also use Apache FOP, if you prefer xslt and xsl-fo.
If the number of invoices to create is low you might want to use open-office (directly or as a toolkit).
If you want high-precision positioning and low-level access, a low-level pdf library (I don't know if iTextSharp works with mono) might be what you want.
I would try out LaTeX first, because it allows you to get results with the least effort.
I've previously produced invoices by templating a PostScript file, and then using Ghostscript's ps2pdf to convert those into PDFs.
We use Reportlab with Python. If you look around there are a load of ready-made forms/invoices/etc.
There are several OSS reporting engines (Jasper Reports, Pentaho and BIRT to name three) that you could use in much the same way as you have historically used Crystal Reports. One of the other posters mentions ReportLab, which is an option if you're using Python or can embed a Python runtime in your application.
Probably the most flexible solution is to create XMLs with invoice data and then by using XSLTs transform the, into PDFs, HTMls, whatever...
It depends on your environment. If you have access to Java, you might look at iText (http://www.lowagie.com/iText/), a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly.
There are two steps, if i understood correctly:
1) Creation of PDF template with placeholders to populate data programmatically
2) Populating the PDF template programmatically during run time
For #1, OpenOffice allows creation of PDF templates, which can then be populated programmatically. It's good enough to create simple invoices that doesn't probably involve datagrid/table kind of stuff.
For #2, you already have the answers here - iText, iTextSharp.
Hope this helps!
I love wkhtmltopdf http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/
Not sure what your goal is here, but there is an opensource php-library called fpdf, which also has an extension for taking a pre-made pdf as layout and then populate it with more content, generating a new PDF with that info.
However, I would go for a solution that you can integrate nicely into the plattform you're building, but I wouldn't go in a HTML->PDF solution since you won't have any clue about what would fit on a piece of paper regarding sizes in that kind of enviroment, meaning you won't know when you should split the content into two separate templates.
You might also try using XSL:FO. XSL:FO is a documented standard for describing page layout: http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/#fo-section.
I've had success on two projects creating documents by creating an XML schema that defines the content of the "PDF". I then use the XSD tool (from Microsoft) to generate a class representing this document. I then map my data into that structure, serialize the populated class to XML, along with an XSL stylesheet that defines how that data should be mapped into FO, and pass it to an FO formatter. For formatters, I have use Alt-Soft's Xml2Pdf with success. There are a few others out there. There are some tools available to help create the XSL to FO stylesheet (i.e. stylusstudio and XmlSpy), but I recommend learning the FO constructs as the tools seem to produce bloated stylesheets. FO is comparable to HTML (where a P tag is a BLOCK tag in FO), but can be tricky. This nice thing about FO, is that some formatter support conversion to other formats, such as Word, HTML, etc.
Other options:
iTextSharp (C# port of iText). Just started reading about this. Open source and free. I don't think there is any "templating" supported with this, but I could be wrong about that.
SQL Server Reporting Services. Assuming your invoice data is in, or can be put in, a format that can be read by reporting services (SQL Server, Web Service, etc), define the layout in SSRS and then publish to reporting server. Use SSRS Web Services or query parameter execution to execute the report and have it output as PDF.
This html-2-pdf site may be a helpful starting point: http://maarten.lippmann.us/?p=101
A site a friend of mine built uses a script to churn HTML pages into printable PDFs, too - http://philambdaupsilon.org. Not sure on the exact details of it, but he is an SO user, and I'll send this question to him, too.
Unfortunately, the best system on the market (at present) is passing the HTML & CSS to a ColdFusion server and have that return the rendered PDF. So if money isn't a big concern, this is the quickest to deploy solution that'll render the best results.
I've tried very hard to get FPDF, TCPDF, the R&OS pdf class, and even CodeIgniter's recommendation to work, but nothing with stable output for anything beyond the most basic/bland HTML files.
Honestly, if the ColdFusion solution isn't viable, I'd use html2ps, and then ps2pdf to convert your files into a PDF.
(This is all assuming that you don't want to take the time and design each PDF using the native PDF-creator code in PHP. This is what systems like SugarCRM use. Though its very functional with stable results, the actual creation of each PDF-generator file is a most painful process)
We have used Jasper Reports before. It's not what you'd call user-friendly, but it will talk directly to your database.
html2pdf works very well. You can use this to generate both HTML and PDF reports from the same source.
I'm fiddling with Black Sheep Invoices right now, which is great at first but now I'm having trouble actually getting it to render the PDFs. Lots of installation difficulties--probably a lot easier on your own server but i'm up on a shared host with it. The HTML output and data management portions are well done though, which is something you won't get out of just creating a postscript template. I was hoping to find a reference to a library that has an active development team though (Black Sheep is not being updated at this time).
If you want browser perfect HTML converted to PDF then try commandlineprint
You'll need to install firefox on a linux distro, disable all firefox alerts and then run it through a virtual display. Check this thread for more details.
It's infuriating to get running well but does give you the best results for HTML to PDF conversion I've seen.
OK, a search of Google Code projects turned up Simple Invoices, which is awesome and well maintained.
I use TROFF for my invoices because of its extremely simple textual encoding. The logic is a few lines of Perl. Keeping it simple.
For a Ruby solution, try Prawn: http://prawn.majesticseacreature.com/
I use open office on the server and then generate the XML for the document (just unzip the document and hack away)
Some can use Dhek template editor to define area/placeholder for existing PDF, without altering existing document, and then populate it to generate final doc (e.g. with user values from a form): https://github.com/applicius/dhek .

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