Hi,
Please excuse this somewhat offtopic question. I'm posting it here because I
expect that some of the people on this list may have dabbled with all of
these technologies, and might have some useful experience to share. You may
wish to reply off-list. Suggestions of better fora are very welcome.
What I need to do is to programmatically generate a postscript document,
placing images and small chunks of text at locations specified by a template,
with specific values pulled from a database. I'm trying to determine what
would be the easiest and most flexible way of accomplishing this. The bulk
of the program is written in Java, but I have to call some shell scripts
anyway, so there is no problem with using command-line tools (on Linux).
The options I'm considering so far are:
1. Use the Java2D printing API to "draw" on an in-memory bitmap which can be
converted to PS
2. Generate a TeX/LaTeX document and convert to PS
3. Generate an XSL:FO document and convert to PS
4. Generate the PS document directly
Of course, I don't know TeX/LaTeX, XSL:FO, PS or the Java2D API, so I'm going
to have to learn whatever I use. I've got no objection to learning all of
them so that I can pick the best option, except that I'm working to a pretty
tight deadline. I also need fairly precise control over the output.
One more consideration is that all else being equal, I'd prefer to learn the
more useful tool. I suspect that may be TeX/LaTeX, and I'm quite certain
it's not the Java printing API. Given the time pressure, however, I need to
take the quickest path.
Any suggestions? I'm currently leaning toward writing code that generates PS
directly.
Thanks,
Shawn.
