Re: PDF generation
On 4/19/02 10:33 PM, Stas Bekman [EMAIL PROTECTED] claimed: If your end goal is PS, better generated PS in first place. From my experience ps - pdf - ps, makes the final PS a much bigger file (5-10 times bigger). I use html2ps for generating PS files (used for generating the mod_perl guide's pdf). Actually, I realized the same thing yesterday. I'm looking at possibly just using PostScript::Document to create PS and forgetting about PDF for now. Regards, David -- David Wheeler AIM: dwTheory [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ: 15726394 http://david.wheeler.net/ Yahoo!: dew7e Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: PDF generation
On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 16:01:24, Drew Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can highly recommend PDFLib. It's not quite free in that you have to buy a license if you make a product out of it, but it's still cheap. Matt Sergeant has recently added an OO interface over the PDFLib functions with PDFLib. http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=PDFLib This looks pretty good to me. Can anyone suggest how I might programmtically send a PDF to a printer once I've generated it in Perl/mod_perl? Thanks, David -- David Wheeler AIM: dwTheory [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ: 15726394 http://david.wheeler.net/ Yahoo!: dew7e Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: PDF generation
On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Andrew Ho wrote: DWThis looks pretty good to me. Can anyone suggest how I might DWprogrammtically send a PDF to a printer once I've generated it in DWPerl/mod_perl? Use either Ghostscript or Adobe Acrobat Reader to convert to Postscript, then print in your normal manner (if you usually use Ghostscript as a print filter anyway, you can just print directly using it). For Adobe Acrobat Reader, use the -toPostScript option. Use Acrobat Reader if you can. The font support is significantly better in my experience, at least under Linux. -sam
Re: PDF generation
Andrew Ho wrote: Hello, DWThis looks pretty good to me. Can anyone suggest how I might DWprogrammtically send a PDF to a printer once I've generated it in DWPerl/mod_perl? Use either Ghostscript or Adobe Acrobat Reader to convert to Postscript, then print in your normal manner (if you usually use Ghostscript as a print filter anyway, you can just print directly using it). For Adobe Acrobat Reader, use the -toPostScript option. If your end goal is PS, better generated PS in first place. From my experience ps - pdf - ps, makes the final PS a much bigger file (5-10 times bigger). I use html2ps for generating PS files (used for generating the mod_perl guide's pdf). __ Stas BekmanJAm_pH -- Just Another mod_perl Hacker http://stason.org/ mod_perl Guide --- http://perl.apache.org mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://use.perl.org http://apacheweek.com http://modperlbook.org http://apache.org http://ticketmaster.com
Re: PDF generation
On Wednesday 03 April 2002 22:43, Bill McCabe wrote: I have a large number of mod_perl modules that connect to various databases and generate workflow performance reports for my organization. I give the users 3 output options: HTML, Excel (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and PDF. For PDF output I've been using PDF::Create, which has been at version .01 since 1999. It has worked flawlessly for my purposes for a couple of years, but is very limited. In fine form-follows-function fashion, the end users would now like the PDF output gussied up with graphics, etc. Does anyone have any strong (positive or negative) recommendations for which module(s) I should migrate to? Sorry to answer so late, I've been offline. It would seem, unless I missed something from the thread, that no one mentionned AxPoint. It's originally create to generate slides but it can do more. The latest version adds some SVG support for graphics, which means you could reuse the same code to generate web graphics. It's a really good bundle, especially if you're not too fond of coding to the PDF API. -- ___ Robin Berjon [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- CTO k n o w s c a p e : // venture knowledge agency www.knowscape.com --- Always remember you're unique just like everyone else.
Re: PDF generation
On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 07:51:42PM +0200, Thomas Eibner took time to write: More precisely I have LaTeX templates, I use CGI::FastTemplate to fill them in with dynamic data, run pdflatex, and then have a nice PDF file. Sounds like an interesting solution, but how long does it take to generate the pdf files? I need something that will insert data into Few seconds, at least for my cases (and by doing PUSHs to the Web client it let it know exactly where we are at the generation). You should also consider, if possible, to generate files in advance of use. PDF's at certain positions (they may change) and I was looking wheter it would be possible doing something like CGI::FastTemplate just for PDF's. The only requirement would be that you could use _any_ program that generates PDF's to generate these templates. So I built part of a PDF parser that would extract the text portions of a PDF, but then I found that a PDF generated by Adobe Distiller (just as an example) generates text sections that look something like: [(Kv)25.1(ar r)9.9(adioj mangxas la fla)20(v)24.8(a)] for the simple text of Kvar radioj mangxas la flava. Doesn't that just look hopeless to parse? I'm about to give up on this solution, any comments? I also think that should not mess with the PDF output directly. Because it looks like text, but as you show yourself, it is in fact more complicated. Patrick.
Re: PDF generation
On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 01:32:58PM +0200, Patrick wrote: Few seconds, at least for my cases (and by doing PUSHs to the Web client it let it know exactly where we are at the generation). Okay, that sounds bareable. You should also consider, if possible, to generate files in advance of use. That would have been a possibility if there wasn't such a high impact when you generate the statistics I need. I also think that should not mess with the PDF output directly. Because it looks like text, but as you show yourself, it is in fact more complicated. That is true, but it's a fine line between either having to do ALL the work everytime a layout has to change (try getting any of your graphical designers to make a layout in LaTeX :( ) or just parsing a PDF. And since placing content at an absolute position isn't really an option either it's not possible just to import the PDF and then write the information needed to the document. I wonder how much PDI from pdflib.org will do.. -- Thomas Eibner http://thomas.eibner.dk/ DnsZone http://dnszone.org/ mod_pointer http://stderr.net/mod_pointer http://photos.eibner.dk/
RE: PDF generation
Of course others have already told you about Text::PDF, and no doubt you googled the group Yahoo! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/perl-text-pdf-modules/messages You can do anything you want with PDFs, but the interface is hard to grok and you really need to wrap it. I have a framework that we use to pull info from a database on-the-fly, and generate either Excel spreadsheets, Text dumps or PDFs. It ain't really ready for public primetime. I put out a message about 6 months ago in the PDF list asking if anyone wanted to co-operate with me on getting it ready for realworld. The goal is to be able to create some relatively simple Perl structures and then throw them at a Spreadsheet, PDF, HTML or other rendering engine and reap the rewards! The doc tree used [i.e. Perl structures] leant heavily on the CSS analysis done by the w3 guys on how to organise layout and styles etc in such a way as to be independent of the ultimate rendering environment. Here is the post where I postulate an ideal universe where data is automagically formatted in wondrous tabular PDF prose... http://groups.yahoo.com/group/perl-text-pdf-modules/message/468 mail me direct if you want to help take it further. Regards Jeff -Original Message- From: Thomas Eibner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 08 April 2002 13:47 To: modperl Subject: Re: PDF generation On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 01:32:58PM +0200, Patrick wrote: Few seconds, at least for my cases (and by doing PUSHs to the Web client it let it know exactly where we are at the generation). Okay, that sounds bareable. You should also consider, if possible, to generate files in advance of use. That would have been a possibility if there wasn't such a high impact when you generate the statistics I need. I also think that should not mess with the PDF output directly. Because it looks like text, but as you show yourself, it is in fact more complicated. That is true, but it's a fine line between either having to do ALL the work everytime a layout has to change (try getting any of your graphical designers to make a layout in LaTeX :( ) or just parsing a PDF. And since placing content at an absolute position isn't really an option either it's not possible just to import the PDF and then write the information needed to the document. I wonder how much PDI from pdflib.org will do.. -- Thomas Eibner http://thomas.eibner.dk/ DnsZone http://dnszone.org/ mod_pointer http://stderr.net/mod_pointer http://photos.eibner.dk/
Re: PDF generation
On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 02:11:39AM +0200, Patrick wrote: On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 03:43:39PM -0500, Bill McCabe took time to write: I have a large number of mod_perl modules that connect to various databases and generate workflow performance reports for my organization. I give the users 3 output options: HTML, Excel (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and PDF. For PDF output I've been using PDF::Create, which has been at version .01 since 1999. It has worked flawlessly for my purposes for a couple of years, but is very limited. In fine form-follows-function fashion, the end users would now like the PDF output gussied up with graphics, etc. Does anyone have any strong (positive or negative) recommendations for which module(s) I should migrate to? I do not use Perl modules to do that, but LaTeX. As ugly as it may sound it enables to output very complex PDF files, exactly the way you want. More precisely I have LaTeX templates, I use CGI::FastTemplate to fill them in with dynamic data, run pdflatex, and then have a nice PDF file. Sounds like an interesting solution, but how long does it take to generate the pdf files? I need something that will insert data into PDF's at certain positions (they may change) and I was looking wheter it would be possible doing something like CGI::FastTemplate just for PDF's. The only requirement would be that you could use _any_ program that generates PDF's to generate these templates. So I built part of a PDF parser that would extract the text portions of a PDF, but then I found that a PDF generated by Adobe Distiller (just as an example) generates text sections that look something like: [(Kv)25.1(ar r)9.9(adioj mangxas la fla)20(v)24.8(a)] for the simple text of Kvar radioj mangxas la flava. Doesn't that just look hopeless to parse? I'm about to give up on this solution, any comments? -- Thomas Eibner http://thomas.eibner.dk/ DnsZone http://dnszone.org/ mod_pointer http://stderr.net/mod_pointer http://photos.eibner.dk/
Re: PDF generation
On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 03:43:39PM -0500, Bill McCabe took time to write: I have a large number of mod_perl modules that connect to various databases and generate workflow performance reports for my organization. I give the users 3 output options: HTML, Excel (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and PDF. For PDF output I've been using PDF::Create, which has been at version .01 since 1999. It has worked flawlessly for my purposes for a couple of years, but is very limited. In fine form-follows-function fashion, the end users would now like the PDF output gussied up with graphics, etc. Does anyone have any strong (positive or negative) recommendations for which module(s) I should migrate to? I do not use Perl modules to do that, but LaTeX. As ugly as it may sound it enables to output very complex PDF files, exactly the way you want. More precisely I have LaTeX templates, I use CGI::FastTemplate to fill them in with dynamic data, run pdflatex, and then have a nice PDF file. Good luck in your search. Patrick.
Re: PDF generation (fwd)
I have had a tremendous amount of success with htmldoc. see: http://www.easysw.com/htmldoc/ (it's gpl'd and has fairly decent documentation). not a module, but can be easily called from cgi-bin, etc and handles formatting really well. you design your output in html and pass it to htmldoc and out comes a pdf. good luck jim willis -- Forwarded message -- Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 15:43:39 -0500 From: Bill McCabe [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: modperl [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: PDF generation Hi All I have a large number of mod_perl modules that connect to various databases and generate workflow performance reports for my organization. I give the users 3 output options: HTML, Excel (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and PDF. For PDF output I've been using PDF::Create, which has been at version .01 since 1999. It has worked flawlessly for my purposes for a couple of years, but is very limited. In fine form-follows-function fashion, the end users would now like the PDF output gussied up with graphics, etc. Does anyone have any strong (positive or negative) recommendations for which module(s) I should migrate to? TIA, Bill --
Re: PDF generation
Mike808 wrote: Don't know if you can run a JServ+mod_perl or JPerl hybrid, though. You can, but it would be the biggest memory hog every created, since it would be running a JVM in addition to the Perl interpreters. - Perrin
Re: PDF generation
On April 3, 2002 12:43 pm, Bill McCabe wrote: I have a large number of mod_perl modules that connect to various databases and generate workflow performance reports for my organization. I give the users 3 output options: HTML, Excel (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and PDF. For PDF output I've been using PDF::Create, which has been at version .01 since 1999. It has worked flawlessly for my purposes for a couple of years, but is very limited. In fine form-follows-function fashion, the end users would now like the PDF output gussied up with graphics, etc. Does anyone have any strong (positive or negative) recommendations for which module(s) I should migrate to? We've been using the Text::PDF modules here ourselves on several projects, all with great success. Is a bit low-level, though, which may not be quite what you're looking for. There's also a Text::PDF::API2 package on CPAN which takes the low-level stuff and presents a higher-level API to help you in building up your PDF documents. We needed something that'd give us ultimate low-level control over PDF entities so we went with Text::PDF ourselves, but both of them work quite well. -- Graham TerMarsch Howling Frog Internet Development, Inc. http://www.howlingfrog.com // - // DEC diagnostics would run on a dead whale. -- Mel Ferentz // -
RE: PDF generation
In reference to PDF::Create... Has anyone found any good documentation behind the module... I would like to print the results of a query to PDF and I not exactly sure whether I can use an array or a concatenate the results in a string. Allen -Original Message- From: Perrin Harkins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 9:39 AM To: Mike808 Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: PDF generation Mike808 wrote: Don't know if you can run a JServ+mod_perl or JPerl hybrid, though. You can, but it would be the biggest memory hog every created, since it would be running a JVM in addition to the Perl interpreters. - Perrin This message may contain proprietary or confidential company information. Any unauthorized use or disclosure is prohibited.
RE: PDF generation
On 4/4/02 at 1:07 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Wilson, Allen) wrote: In reference to PDF::Create... Has anyone found any good documentation behind the module... I would like to print the results of a query to PDF and I not exactly sure whether I can use an array or a concatenate the results in a string. Allen AFAIK, the only docs are what comes with the distribution. For tabluar reports, I retrieve all my results as array's which get fed to a function that calculates x,y pixel offsets and print each item to its position. If you want to make a string out of each row, you'll have to use a fixed width font and calculate the needed spaces to pad each column and you'll still need to track vertical pixel position for each row, so it didn't seem to be much less work to me to go that route. Anyway, as I pointed out in my initial question, though PDF::Create has worked flawlessly for me for the last two years, it definitely seems to have been orphaned by its creator. If you're just getting started with perl-PDF generation, why not choose one of those recommended in this thread? My inclination would be use Matt Sergeant's PDFlib which seems well designed, but I have a (probably unjustifiable) knee-jerk reaction against having to license products. So, I'll give PDF::API2 a whack. Bill
PDF generation
Hi All I have a large number of mod_perl modules that connect to various databases and generate workflow performance reports for my organization. I give the users 3 output options: HTML, Excel (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and PDF. For PDF output I've been using PDF::Create, which has been at version .01 since 1999. It has worked flawlessly for my purposes for a couple of years, but is very limited. In fine form-follows-function fashion, the end users would now like the PDF output gussied up with graphics, etc. Does anyone have any strong (positive or negative) recommendations for which module(s) I should migrate to? TIA, Bill
Re: PDF generation
On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 03:43:39PM -0500, Bill McCabe wrote: Hi All I have a large number of mod_perl modules that connect to various databases and generate workflow performance reports for my organization. I give the users 3 output options: HTML, Excel (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and PDF. For PDF output I've been using PDF::Create, which has been at version .01 since 1999. It has worked flawlessly for my purposes for a couple of years, but is very limited. In fine form-follows-function fashion, the end users would now like the PDF output gussied up with graphics, etc. Does anyone have any strong (positive or negative) recommendations for which module(s) I should migrate to? I've had good success with PDFLib http://www.pdflib.org/, but the license isn't what one could have hoped for :-/ Matt Sergeant wrote an OO interface to pdflib_pl.pm which is what I am using. -- Thomas Eibner http://thomas.eibner.dk/ DnsZone http://dnszone.org/ mod_pointer http://stderr.net/mod_pointer http://photos.eibner.dk/
Re: PDF generation
I have used the HTMLtoPDF converter from htmldoc ( http://www.os2site.com/sw/util/convert/ ) with great success. I also have used html2ps and ps2pdf to make this transition as well using ImageMagick ( http://www.imagemagick.org/ ). Its a really nice approache since it essentially makes the sky the limit on your PDF presentation. We did an HR process for a company once where the users would answer a bunch of questions and end up with a PDF on their desktop to print, sign and hand to HR. John- On Wed, 3 Apr 2002 15:43:39 -0500 Bill McCabe [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi All I have a large number of mod_perl modules that connect to various databases and generate workflow performance reports for my organization. I give the users 3 output options: HTML, Excel (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and PDF. For PDF output I've been using PDF::Create, which has been at version .01 since 1999. It has worked flawlessly for my purposes for a couple of years, but is very limited. In fine form-follows-function fashion, the end users would now like the PDF output gussied up with graphics, etc. Does anyone have any strong (positive or negative) recommendations for which module(s) I should migrate to? TIA, Bill
Re: PDF generation
I can highly recommend PDFLib. It's not quite free in that you have to buy a license if you make a product out of it, but it's still cheap. Matt Sergeant has recently added an OO interface over the PDFLib functions with PDFLib. http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=PDFLib There are others that will convert HTML into PDF, but I prefer the precise options available with PDFLib. Drew At 03:43 PM 4/3/02 -0500, Bill McCabe wrote: Hi All I have a large number of mod_perl modules that connect to various databases and generate workflow performance reports for my organization. I give the users 3 output options: HTML, Excel (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and PDF. For PDF output I've been using PDF::Create, which has been at version .01 since 1999. It has worked flawlessly for my purposes for a couple of years, but is very limited. In fine form-follows-function fashion, the end users would now like the PDF output gussied up with graphics, etc. Does anyone have any strong (positive or negative) recommendations for which module(s) I should migrate to? TIA, Bill
Re: PDF generation
At 3:43 PM -0500 4/3/02, Bill McCabe wrote: Hi All I have a large number of mod_perl modules that connect to various databases and generate workflow performance reports for my organization. I give the users 3 output options: HTML, Excel (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and PDF. For PDF output I've been using PDF::Create, which has been at version .01 since 1999. It has worked flawlessly for my purposes for a couple of years, but is very limited. In fine form-follows-function fashion, the end users would now like the PDF output gussied up with graphics, etc. Does anyone have any strong (positive or negative) recommendations for which module(s) I should migrate to? Actually, I used PDF::API2. I've used it for graphics and others and have contributed patches to the source (which may or may not have been included, but which aren't critical for general use). The only downside is that it is poorly documented (in my opinion), but determination overruled and I've used it quite for all types of applications (including dynamic fill-out-and-download applications). The speed isn't great, but if it's a low traffic application, it shouldn't be a problem. Rob -- When I used a Mac, they laughed because I had no command prompt. When I used Linux, they laughed because I had no GUI.
Re: PDF generation
Hi y'all, At 3:43 PM -0500 4/3/02, Bill McCabe wrote: output options: HTML, Excel (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and PDF. For PDF output I've been using PDF::Create, which has been at version .01 since 1999. It has worked flawlessly for my purposes for a couple of years, but is very limited. In fine form-follows-function fashion, the end users would now like the PDF output gussied up with graphics, etc. Does anyone have any strong (positive or negative) recommendations for which module(s) I should migrate to? Robert Landrum wrote: Actually, I used PDF::API2. I've used it for graphics and others and have contributed patches to the source (which may or may not have been included, but which aren't critical for general use). The only downside is that it is poorly documented (in my opinion), but determination overruled and I've used it quite for all types of applications (including dynamic fill-out-and-download applications). The speed isn't great, but if it's a low traffic application, it shouldn't be a problem. Just wanted to second Robert's recommendation. We use PDF::API2 as well for a client, and it arrived just in time. The key for us was that PDF::API2 allows us to edit a PDF file, so we can start with a template and just make a few changes. We needed to be able to start with a PDF file supplied by a client and just make some edits to the file on the fly based on user input. It's a bit less stable than other modules I've used, but it's young and rapidly improving. Take care, Kurt Hansen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: PDF generation
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I also have used html2ps and ps2pdf to make this transition as well using ImageMagick ( http://www.imagemagick.org/ ). Its a really nice approache since it essentially makes the sky the limit on your PDF presentation. We did an HR process for a company once where the users would answer a bunch of questions and end up with a PDF on their desktop to print, sign and hand to HR. Ditto. 4 years ago, insurance qualifier for a brokerage firm. The HTML-PDF made a nice what you see on your screen is what printed at the home office for the users. And the home office loved not having to decipher mangled handwritten faxes. Another product I've used for (gasp) Java is Root River systems. Very nice report-writer type API with decent page-flow behaviours. Don't know if you can run a JServ+mod_perl or JPerl hybrid, though. Mike808/ -- perl -le $_='7284254074:0930970:H4012816';tr[0-][ BOPEN!SMUT];print
Re: PDF generation
Hi there, On Wed, 3 Apr 2002, Mike808 wrote: Don't know if you can run a JServ+mod_perl or JPerl hybrid, though. You can certainly run Java on one server and mod_perl on another, I do this routinely in production. (With mod_perl on the FRONT end... :) 73, Ged.
