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/>
