Tracy R Reed wrote:
We need to be able to produce custom forms such as invoices, packing
lists, receipts, etc. We have been doing it with LaTeX but there are two
problems with it:
1. The first is technical. LaTex is good at books and articles etc. but
it is not so great at making forms. For example it considers each page
individually so columns will not necessarily line up across pages
depending on how wide the biggest thing in the column is etc. Its job is
really as a typesetting program where the author provides the content
and LaTeX generates the presentation. We need something that will let us
specify both the content and the presentation.
2. Only a couple people here know LaTeX.
We would like to be able to have our web design staff create our forms
for us. We can make great looking forms on the screen exactly how we
want them using XHTML/CSS. And if we hit print it turns out great. The
problem is how can we render XHTML/CSS to postscript in an automated
fashion? We have to be able to do it from a shell script or perl or
python. The first thing that always comes to mind is somehow scripting
Mozilla but I am not aware of a way to script it in this way much less
do it on a headless server. Others have suggested OpenOffice but it
would have the same problem as mozilla. And if it is possible nobody
seems to know anyone who has actually done it.
Ideas?
Scripting Mozilla/Firefox means writing Javascript. You would create a
URL that consists of the reference to the file you need to process and
then run it like
mozilla file:///var/www/html/some-other-stuff/myfile.html
To make this work on a headless box you could use the Xvfb (X Virtual
Frame Buffer driver, xorg-x11-server-Xvfb in the latest version of
Fedora). This allows you to run X applications without having a video card.
You may need to capture the PID of the mozilla instance to send it a HUP
to make it shut down when you are done. I haven't done any experiments
with this yet to check the exact behavior. I also don't know how it
would handle multiple instantiations.
Print to a Postscript printer driver but send the output to a file. This
is fairly straightforward in Linux and there are generic printer drivers
available for MS Windows.
For example, I have HP Laserjet 4ML and Mozilla on Linux uses the
Postscript printer driver to send print jobs to the printer. However, I
have the option to redirect the output to a file instead of the printer.
If you want to use Mozilla/Firefox as an application builder tool I
recommend "Rapid Application Development with Mozilla" by Nigel
McFarlane, Prentice-Hall, Bruce Perens Open Source Series. I have a copy
you can borrow. Be warned that at times it is fairly dense (or maybe I
am) and that if you need to do some extension work you'll need a C++
programmer. But from the sound of it I think you can get away with just
some simple programming. The real problem will be making the security
part work because you will be messing with local files.
Gus
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