> -----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.
