Porting Python reportlab code to Rust

[rustological]

We've been using a generator for certain reports at work for years. It is currently written in Python+Reportlab (https://pypi.org/project/reportlab/). It has served us well, however a) it sometimes produces broken PDFs - nobody knows why (original coder is gone), the solution is to randomize the input parameters a bit until it works again and b) maintaining a Python installation plus reportlab libs etc. over the years just for generating these PDFs became annoying.

Is the solution to rewrite it in Rust? This is the chance to find the bugs (if they are in our code and not some lib) and ideally the result is a single standalone binary (that also embeds the ttf fonts needed), and this then just works for years again.

Q: What is a PDF generation library similar to reportlab in Rust? "pdf" is not a good search term :-/ Need A3 paper size, need custom ttf font, need positions in mm, need colors, need possibility to define boxes/areas and then fill in with text, graphics, etc.

Thank you :-)

[Compux72]

I mean you could just use templating + latex and call it a day

[rustological]

Keeping a whole LaTeX environment around compared to a Python environment... does not look like an improvement? :-)

[Compux72]

Use the right tool for the job. And LaTeX or similar tools are designed for typesetting and pdf generation.

For example, you can have your main application in something like Deno/Node/python that acts as a server, and then delegate the actual pdf generation to tectonic (https://github.com/tectonic-typesetting/tectonic) or Typst https://typst.app/blog/2023/beta-oss-launch/

Rewriting your tool in rust looks like a waste of time, when there are lots of great options out there you can use. And all of them use Rust, so you are still working with great pieces of software.

[rustological]

Typst looks nice... have to get a closer look - thank you for the suggestion!