Pretty Printing

A bit off topic, but what methods are people using to get
nicely
printed output?

For example, I currently export to csv which is is used with
MS Word
in a merge to generate things like labels and name tags.  It
would be
nicer to just generate a pdf, for example.

Also have a need to generate good looking invoices.

And big invoices, too, but that's another issue.


-- 
Bill Moseley
moseleyhank.org


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Bill Moseley wrote:
> A bit off topic, but what methods are people using to
get nicely
> printed output?

LaTeX (see yesterday's thread)
XSL-FO (Apache FOP (Java))
PDF::ReportWriter (particular good for invoices and similar
reports)
PDF::API2

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Bill Moseley wrote:
> A bit off topic, but what methods are people using to
get nicely
> printed output?
>
> For example, I currently export to csv which is is used
with MS Word
> in a merge to generate things like labels and name
tags.  It would be
> nicer to just generate a pdf, for example.
>
> Also have a need to generate good looking invoices.
>
> And big invoices, too, but that's another issue.
LaTeX, of course   
Although I admit that I make much use of LaTeX 
macros, stylefiles and class files, so the TT2 template is
fairly simple.

Andrew

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Ltd            
A.Fordford-mason.co.uk   South Wing Compton House          
           
pauntley-prints.co.uk     Compton Green, Redmarley  Tel: +44
1531 829900
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1531 829901
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7785 258278



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We use pdf's created via the latex plugin for printing
reports and it 
certainly looks more professional and consistent than
printing a web 
page.  See previous thread on Latex for my comments on some
of the 
negatives/positives to the Latex approach - suffice to say
we use it but 
wish we didn't have to.

You might want to take a look at some other perl modules -
there are 
various ones for outputting word documents, excel
spreadsheets and PDFs 
(http://search.cpan.org).

You can easily test these perl modules using a PERL block in
TT (or 
directly in perl) and see if you like them.  If you do then
it is probably 
worth writing a TT plugin to wrap the perl module (far
easier than it 
sounds) - I do recommend the book if you haven't already
got it on how to 
write your own TT plugin, you should be able to do it in a
few lines.

I recently tested PDF::ReportWriter which does do labels,
barcodes  and 
invoices so you might want to have a look at that - the xml
is easier than 
it looks if you have never done it before, just follow the
examples. 
http://en
tropy.homelinux.org/axis_not_evil/

I can send some test code for PDF::ReportWriter - a template
with an XML 
block describing the look, a DBI connection to execute some
sql and a PERL 
block to call PDF::ReportWriter (because I was too lazy to
write a TT 
plugin for it).  If that is of interest to anyone.  I liked 
PDF::ReportWriter a lot, I created a nice looking report
with graphics in 
an hour or so compared with the days it took me to get the
Latex equivalent 
looking ok.  But it does not quite go far enough for my
needs at the moment.

FOP is the another option for PDFs http://xmlgraphics
.apache.org/fop/ and 
it uses JAVA but I believe there is a perl module for it so
you could 
theoretically use it from TT.

There are a few others you will no doubt dig up in CPAN that
will do the 
kind of things you want.
Regards
Simon




At 15:57 02/06/2006, you wrote:

>A bit off topic, but what methods are people using to
get nicely
>printed output?
>
>For example, I currently export to csv which is is used
with MS Word
>in a merge to generate things like labels and name tags.
 It would be
>nicer to just generate a pdf, for example.
>
>Also have a need to generate good looking invoices.
>
>And big invoices, too, but that's another issue.
>
>
>--
>Bill Moseley
>moseleyhank.org
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>templates mailing list
>templatestemplate-toolkit.org
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emplates
>
>
>
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Date: 01/06/2006


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Stuart Johnston wrote:
> Bill Moseley wrote:
>> A bit off topic, but what methods are people using
to get nicely
>> printed output?
> 
> LaTeX (see yesterday's thread)
> XSL-FO (Apache FOP (Java))
> PDF::ReportWriter (particular good for invoices and
similar reports)
> PDF::API2

Hi Bill,

In addition to this list by Stuart, HTMLDoc is pretty slick
to use. It allows you to convert HTML 3.2/4.0 to PDF, so you
can create whatever HTML you want, and then use HTMLDoc to
make a PDF. It probably doesn't give you as clean of a PDF
as the others, but it sure as heck is easy. (It's probably
more resource intensive as well.) Writing HTML is a lot
easier than dealing with LaTeX and its quirks. (Yes, we use
that, but also HTMLDoc for some things. These days I would
try HTMLDoc first, since it is so much easier to use.) Just
create a TT filter to do the work, and call it good.

http://www.htmldoc.org/

There is an example PDF-o-matic page too that you can do a
quick test on. Input a page url and it will spit out a PDF.
http://www
.easysw.com/htmldoc/examples.php

It doesn't support all HTML stuff, but is good enough for
most things. CSS support does not exist in the stable 1.8.x
series, but is being added in the 1.9.x version I believe.
However, I wouldn't count on that coming out for a while
since development seems to have halted to a snail's pace.
Also, if using utf-8 you may need to change encoding into
cp1252 or iso-8859-1 since utf-8 isn't supported in the
1.8.x series. (No big deal, though, since the Perl Encode
module makes it easy.)

-- Josh

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On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 10:10:40AM -0500, Stuart Johnston
wrote:
> Bill Moseley wrote:
> >A bit off topic, but what methods are people using
to get nicely
> >printed output?
> 
> LaTeX (see yesterday's thread)

Oh, I searched my archives and didn't think about looking
in my
current folder.  Duh.  Thanks.


> XSL-FO (Apache FOP (Java))
> PDF::ReportWriter (particular good for invoices and
similar reports)
> PDF::API2
> 

-- 
Bill Moseley
moseleyhank.org


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On 2006-06-02  07:57:31 (week 22) Bill Moseley wrote:

> A bit off topic, but what methods are people using to
get nicely
> printed output?
> 
> For example, I currently export to csv which is is used
with MS Word
> in a merge to generate things like labels and name
tags.  It would be
> nicer to just generate a pdf, for example.
> 
> Also have a need to generate good looking invoices.
> 
> And big invoices, too, but that's another issue.

Hi Bill,

Normally I generate DocBook XML from my TT2 templates. From
there on you
can use the usual XSL tools to create just about any format
you want.
However the learning curve to go that way might be a bit too
much for
your situation (can't tell how much effort is warranted
from what you
wrote). It takes some time to learn, but once you have you
are awarded
with a lot of freedom and flexibility.

If you are working with XHTML and CSS you could use Prince
(http://www.princexml.com/). It is not cheap ($349 for a personal
license), but it works like a charm. If CSS support is not
necessary you
could try HTMLDoc as well (http://www.easysw.com/
htmldoc/). That's a
nice tool too, but it lacks decent CSS support. As I
understand it
sometime in the future it will get it, but they have been
saying that
for ages now without any noticable progress...

HTH

Grx HdV


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