Re: [tlug] xml to pdf

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, Darren Cook wrote:

> If the original XML was this well formatted my life would be easy (but
> then my clients probably wouldn't need me :-).

My first thought was to write a script to do it. Lots of languages,
(perl, python, ruby, etc.) have XML-parsing and PDF-generating
libraries. When you mention that it's poorly formatted, that just makes
the scripting option more attractive, I would think.

If the formatting gets at all complex, it may be easier to do an
XML->XML transformation and then run it through some other tool that
will deal with the formatting, perhaps with pre-made styles.

We (at Starling) use ruby and the pdf-writer for generating invoices and
the like. Unfortunately, we still don't have it generating Japanese, due
to some issues finding and converting the appropriate fonts. (Well, the
main issue is probably that we just haven't tried all that hard.) If
anybody has that working, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
Mobile sites and software consulting: http://www.starling-software.com