more on modules
Mar. 6th, 2003 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nollyOK, after further poking at the problem, here's what I need:
-- data is coming from a DB, is of variable length, and will contain images of varying size
-- output should a single file (not a tarball/zip of html + images)
-- the resulting file should be easily printable from the typical in-school computer
-- either the generating program needs to insert page breaks in reasonable places or the result needs to be editable with common software. So I need to either group bits of content such that there won't be a pagebreak in the middle unless the clump is more than a page, or I need to be able to tell how full the page is
-- preferably a module that will work with Perl 5.005_03
Here's what I've looked at so far:
PDF: pagination is difficult, if not impossible, and PDF::API2 requires 5.6, though some of the other PDF modules may work, if the pagination thing can be resolved.
Word: can't find a module to write Word. Word will handle HTML, but images remain separate files when done that way.
RTF: doesn't handle image
HTML: images are separate files.
Other formats? Modules to investigate?
-- data is coming from a DB, is of variable length, and will contain images of varying size
-- output should a single file (not a tarball/zip of html + images)
-- the resulting file should be easily printable from the typical in-school computer
-- either the generating program needs to insert page breaks in reasonable places or the result needs to be editable with common software. So I need to either group bits of content such that there won't be a pagebreak in the middle unless the clump is more than a page, or I need to be able to tell how full the page is
-- preferably a module that will work with Perl 5.005_03
Here's what I've looked at so far:
PDF: pagination is difficult, if not impossible, and PDF::API2 requires 5.6, though some of the other PDF modules may work, if the pagination thing can be resolved.
Word: can't find a module to write Word. Word will handle HTML, but images remain separate files when done that way.
RTF: doesn't handle image
HTML: images are separate files.
Other formats? Modules to investigate?
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Re: good luck...
Date: 2003-03-07 11:13 am (UTC)The two problems with HTML are the lack of control over page breaks (surmountable; having the user add them in their word processor is an option, though not the ideal) and the inability to embed images into the file -- links to external files are not OK. We want a single file for them to download.
Re: good luck...
Date: 2003-03-13 01:53 am (UTC)http://search.cpan.org/search?query=postscript&mode=all
PostScript is just a markup language like HTML, albeit even more obscure. Tweaking PostScript for pagination or formatting is fairly simple with some PostScript references. I worked for a printing company and spent eight months working with raw PostScript. It takes some getting used to, but it's doable. It's then pretty portable and printable, as well.
Re: good luck...
Date: 2003-03-14 02:34 pm (UTC)