RE: [OT] pdf creation
simran writes: I believe there is also a Content-disposition tag you can use to tell the browser what to name the file... As mentioned below in my original post, it doesn't work in all browsers. Steve
Re: [OT] pdf creation
Steve Smith wrote: simran writes: I believe there is also a Content-disposition tag you can use to tell the browser what to name the file... As mentioned below in my original post, it doesn't work in all browsers. Like you say, PATH_INFO works for many browsers. I ran into issues with IE not using it properly... I ended up having to tack MYPDFFILE.pdf onto the end of the URI, just so that it would use the correct extension. Something to try perhaps. e.g.: http://server/perl/pdfgen.pl/MYPDFFILE.pdf?MYPDFFILE.pdf In my case, I had to do this trick to get *.exe files to download as *.exe instead of *.com. In the couple of PDF scripts that I have written, I used other modules to create a PostScript or PNG file, then used a system call to convert it to a PDF. For something that isn't being used very often this should be acceptable. Once its a PDF on the system, the file can read in and printed to STDOUT or a redirect to http://server/tmpfiles/$randomtmpfile can be done. -- Regards, Wim Kerkhoff, Software Engineer Merilus, Inc. -|- http://www.merilus.com Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [OT] pdf creation
-Original Message- From: Lon Koenig [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] I apologize for the OT post, but the members of this list seem to be authoritive resource for all web/perl solutions. I'm currently bidding a project, and the client's all in favor of a mod_perl solution. Phase 2 of the project requires on-the-fly pdf creation. I've done page layout in other languages, so I'm not too concerned about coding the thing. My question is: Does anyone have success/horror stories generating pdf files under mod_perl? Recommendations? About 6 months ago I had a good look at the various modules available for PDF creation (for on the fly conversion of XML to PDF using AxKit/mod_perl), and found that they all suffered from C-like interfaces (i.e. it was $pdf-start_page, $pdf-end_page, instead of that stuff being automatic), interface complexity (i.e. changing font and colour mirrored how the low-level PDF format worked), and very poor support for incorporating images. Anyway, so I wrote my own, based on pdflib (www.pdflib.com), called PDFLib.pm. The base pdflib comes with it's own interface called pdflib_pl.pm, but again it's a C-like interface. So PDFLib.pm is more OO. Well, I'm biased, but I think it works pretty well (though it's lacking support for graphics primitives right now), and I use it in AxKit's AxPoint package to create all my slideshows (see http://217.158.50.178/docs/presentations/tpc2001/). One bonus about PDFLib.pm is that the underlying PDF stuff is all done in C, so it's likely a bit faster than all the other (pure perl) options. I've heard good stuff about PDF::Create though (but I think that's one of the ones that didn't support images when I was looking). Matt. _ This message has been checked for all known viruses by Star Internet delivered through the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service. For further information visit http://www.star.net.uk/stats.asp or alternatively call Star Internet for details on the Virus Scanning Service.
Re: [OT] pdf creation
Does anyone have success/horror stories generating pdf files under mod_perl? Recommendations? No horror stories except trying to go about it the wrong way a few times and ended up with multi-hundred megabyte TIFF files as intermediate steps. I ended up using htmldoc (http://www.easysw.com) which does html-pdf in a breeze (as well as html-ps). Handy if you want to pdfify something that you've already rendered into HTML for online display. Dave -- - Dave Baker : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : http://dsb3.com/ - GnuPG: 1024D/D7BCA55D / 09CD D148 57DE 711E 6708 B772 0DD4 51D5 D7BC A55D
Re: [OT] pdf creation
Dave Baker wrote: I ended up using htmldoc (http://www.easysw.com) which does html-pdf in a breeze (as well as html-ps). So does HTML2PS, which is also GPL'd, and written in 100% Perl. Ghostscript or the Acrobat reader can do the PS2PDF output. See http://www.tdb.uu.se/~jan/html2ps.html Mike808/ -- perl -le $_='7284254074:0930970:H4012816';tr[0-][ BOPEN!SMUT];print
RE: [OT] pdf creation
Matt, do you have a plan to release PDFLib.pm ? Oleg On Mon, 29 Oct 2001, Matt Sergeant wrote: -Original Message- From: Lon Koenig [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] I apologize for the OT post, but the members of this list seem to be authoritive resource for all web/perl solutions. I'm currently bidding a project, and the client's all in favor of a mod_perl solution. Phase 2 of the project requires on-the-fly pdf creation. I've done page layout in other languages, so I'm not too concerned about coding the thing. My question is: Does anyone have success/horror stories generating pdf files under mod_perl? Recommendations? About 6 months ago I had a good look at the various modules available for PDF creation (for on the fly conversion of XML to PDF using AxKit/mod_perl), and found that they all suffered from C-like interfaces (i.e. it was $pdf-start_page, $pdf-end_page, instead of that stuff being automatic), interface complexity (i.e. changing font and colour mirrored how the low-level PDF format worked), and very poor support for incorporating images. Anyway, so I wrote my own, based on pdflib (www.pdflib.com), called PDFLib.pm. The base pdflib comes with it's own interface called pdflib_pl.pm, but again it's a C-like interface. So PDFLib.pm is more OO. Well, I'm biased, but I think it works pretty well (though it's lacking support for graphics primitives right now), and I use it in AxKit's AxPoint package to create all my slideshows (see http://217.158.50.178/docs/presentations/tpc2001/). One bonus about PDFLib.pm is that the underlying PDF stuff is all done in C, so it's likely a bit faster than all the other (pure perl) options. I've heard good stuff about PDF::Create though (but I think that's one of the ones that didn't support images when I was looking). Matt. _ This message has been checked for all known viruses by Star Internet delivered through the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service. For further information visit http://www.star.net.uk/stats.asp or alternatively call Star Internet for details on the Virus Scanning Service. Regards, Oleg _ Oleg Bartunov, sci.researcher, hostmaster of AstroNet, Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University (Russia) Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/ phone: +007(095)939-16-83, +007(095)939-23-83
RE: [OT] pdf creation
It's on CPAN already. -Original Message- From: Oleg Bartunov [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 29 October 2001 09:40 To: Matt Sergeant Cc: 'Lon Koenig'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [OT] pdf creation Matt, do you have a plan to release PDFLib.pm ? _ This message has been checked for all known viruses by Star Internet delivered through the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service. For further information visit http://www.star.net.uk/stats.asp or alternatively call Star Internet for details on the Virus Scanning Service.
Re: [OT] pdf creation
Does anyone have success/horror stories generating pdf files under mod_perl? Recommendations? I recently built a customer billing system system that generated PDF invoices using Latex + Template-Toolkit. See http://template-toolkit.org/docs/blue/Manual/Filters.html This was an backend system, but the files could easily be generated online by simply wrapping the template processor in a handler with the appropriate Content-Type: headers. Tip: Although the Content-Disposition: header is supposed to tell the browser the appropriate filename for the file, this doesn't actually work in most browsers. The solution is to extend the URL past the handler/script, e.g. : http://server/perl/pdfgen.pl/MYPDFFILE.pdf Apache will dispatch this to pdfgen.pl, but the browser will assume the default filename is MYPDFFILE.pdf. Hope this helps, Steve
Re: [OT] pdf creation
At 04:01 PM 10/28/2001 -0600, Lon Koenig wrote: I apologize for the OT post, but the members of this list seem to be authoritive resource for all web/perl solutions. I'm currently bidding a project, and the client's all in favor of a mod_perl solution. Phase 2 of the project requires on-the-fly pdf creation. Does anyone have success/horror stories generating pdf files under mod_perl? Recommendations? I've used PDFLib for several projects, and it works wonderfully. The core is written in ANSI C with interfaces for every popular language. It's not free, but it does a lot and works very well. http://www.pdflib.com/ Drew Taylor JA[P|m_p|SQL]H http://www.drewtaylor.com/ Just Another Perl|mod_perl|SQL Hacker mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *** God bless America! *** ICQ: 135298242
Re: [OT] pdf creation
I once did a project using html2pdf under Unix. It worked great for converting the Human Resources forms ( in html ) to printable PDF's that contained variable user information. Worked well and did not cause any real trouble. John- On Sunday, October 28, 2001, at 04:29 PM, Drew Taylor wrote: At 04:01 PM 10/28/2001 -0600, Lon Koenig wrote: I apologize for the OT post, but the members of this list seem to be authoritive resource for all web/perl solutions. I'm currently bidding a project, and the client's all in favor of a mod_perl solution. Phase 2 of the project requires on-the-fly pdf creation. Does anyone have success/horror stories generating pdf files under mod_perl? Recommendations? I've used PDFLib for several projects, and it works wonderfully. The core is written in ANSI C with interfaces for every popular language. It's not free, but it does a lot and works very well. http://www.pdflib.com/ Drew Taylor JA[P|m_p|SQL]H http://www.drewtaylor.com/ Just Another Perl|mod_perl|SQL Hacker mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *** God bless America! *** ICQ: 135298242
