Batch creation of PDF files

[John Summerfield]

I have a little perl that goes to a website (specifically 
www.realestate.com.au) and does a search.

It analyzes the response and creates a web page of my own design, 
complete with the thumbnail images.

My page has all the useful info I require, but without the ads. Also, I 
can automatically drop those properties "under offer" or "under 
contract." I'm not interested in those unless they come back on the market.

Extending it to follow selected links and create a series of "brochures" 
for each property is a matter of a little more similar code: not a 
difficult proposition.

What I'd like to be able to do is create PDF documents rather than HTML 
- HTML is fine for viewing onscreen, but pretty poor for printing, and 
when I go on inspections I like to have bits of paper.

What I don't know is what are suitable tools for the task. I suspect it 
will involve one of more of XML, tex and latex.

I've Googled and found some aging documents that might help (but I don't 
know how long it will take to learn enough XML etc), nor whether the art 
has moved on significantly.

I do not want to do the PDF creation manually, and this rules out OOo 
and similar.

I would like to be able to control image size (as in HTML) so all 
documents look similar, images don't split over pages and so on.

What I'd like is any hints, tutorials, samples and, of course, guidance 
on where to look for more information.



-- 

Cheers
John

-- spambait
1aaaaaaa(a)computerdatasafe.com.au  Z1aaaaaaa(a)computerdatasafe.com.au
Tourist pics http://portgeographe.environmentaldisasters.cds.merseine.nu/

[Charles Curley]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2005 at 11:23:26PM +0800, John Summerfied wrote:
>  I have a little perl that goes to a website (specifically 
>  www.realestate.com.au) and does a search.
>  
>  It analyzes the response and creates a web page of my own design, 
>  complete with the thumbnail images.
>  
>  My page has all the useful info I require, but without the ads. Also, I 
>  can automatically drop those properties "under offer" or "under 
>  contract." I'm not interested in those unless they come back on the market.
>  
>  Extending it to follow selected links and create a series of "brochures" 
>  for each property is a matter of a little more similar code: not a 
>  difficult proposition.
>  
>  What I'd like to be able to do is create PDF documents rather than HTML 
>  - HTML is fine for viewing onscreen, but pretty poor for printing, and 
>  when I go on inspections I like to have bits of paper.
>  
>  What I don't know is what are suitable tools for the task. I suspect it 
>  will involve one of more of XML, tex and latex.
>  
>  I've Googled and found some aging documents that might help (but I don't 
>  know how long it will take to learn enough XML etc), nor whether the art 
>  has moved on significantly.
>  
>  I do not want to do the PDF creation manually, and this rules out OOo 
>  and similar.
>  
>  I would like to be able to control image size (as in HTML) so all 
>  documents look similar, images don't split over pages and so on.
>  
>  What I'd like is any hints, tutorials, samples and, of course, guidance 
>  on where to look for more information. 
I'd go to cpan.org and start searching there.


-- 

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[Deron Meranda]

Also read this Slashdot article.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/24/2126241

If you're willing to go to Python, I use and love the ReportLab
PDF tools http://www.reportlab.org/
-- 
Deron Meranda

[John Summerfield]

Deron Meranda wrote:
>  Also read this Slashdot article.
>  http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/24/2126241 
That lead me by name to some toys at CPAN where I found those and many 
others. Plus some for Java and Python.

>  
>  If you're willing to go to Python, I use and love the ReportLab
>  PDF tools http://www.reportlab.org/ 
Python is one of those things I must learn one day and keep promising 
myself I will RSN. However, I can code shell scripts and Perl, and 
whenever I have a Q&D job to do, it's so easy to reuse what one knows.

Against Java in particular and Python is that I'm using Regular 
Expressions, and unless REs have surfaced in Java since I learned it, 
that's an after-market addon, and while I expect Python can do them, I 
really don't want to confuse myself with yet another implementation of REs.

I've downloaded an assortment and I'll probably use the first of them 
that seems easy enough to use and complete enough to do what I want. 
Likely it will be a CPAN module.

Thanks for your time and thoughts.



-- 

Cheers
John

-- spambait
1aaaaaaa(a)computerdatasafe.com.au  Z1aaaaaaa(a)computerdatasafe.com.au
Tourist pics http://portgeographe.environmentaldisasters.cds.merseine.nu/

[Deron Meranda]

>  Python is one of those things I must learn one day and keep
> promising
>  myself I will RSN. However, I can code shell scripts and Perl, and
>  whenever I have a Q&D job to do, it's so easy to reuse what one knows. 
Nothing wrong with using what works.  But you do owe it to yourself to
take Python for a drive.  It's a very easy and quick language to learn,
primarily because there's very few exceptions or special cases or weird
syntax rules.

Specifically for the Perl guy looking to see what's all the fuss with
Python, you should read the article by Eric Raymond:
http://pythonology.org/success&story=esr


>  Against Java in particular and Python is that I'm using Regular
>  Expressions, and unless REs have surfaced in Java since I learned it,
>  that's an after-market addon, and while I expect Python can do them, I
>  really don't want to confuse myself with yet another implementation of REs. 
Java is a low-level langauage and not very comparable to the so-called
"scripting" languages like Perl, Python, or Ruby.

Python does have really nice REs.  Probably not quite as powerful as
Perl, but close, and perhaps not as "dense".  Python's REa are quite
respectable and pretty easy, especially when combined with many other
Pythonic techniques: http://docs.python.org/lib/module-re.html


Good luck with the PDF thing.  BTW, you may still want to look at
ReportLab if you're itching to dive into Python at some point.  Unlike
most PDF toolkits, ReportLab is surprisingly high-level and lets you
do some very impressive things quickly with very little code.

-- 
Deron Meranda

[John Summerfield]

Deron Meranda wrote:
> >Python is one of those things I must learn one day and keep
> promising
> >myself I will RSN. However, I can code shell scripts and Perl, and
> >whenever I have a Q&D job to do, it's so easy to reuse what one knows.
>  
>  
>  Nothing wrong with using what works.  But you do owe it to yourself to
>  take Python for a drive.  It's a very easy and quick language to learn,
>  primarily because there's very few exceptions or special cases or weird
>  syntax rules. 
Sadly, so many of the languages that I learned when they were "the best" 
I've left behind me:
Fortran (I discovered in '91 how much I'd forgotten)
COBOL
cbasic
PL/1 (I discovered in 2001 that I wasn't too rusty, but PL/1 wasn't as 
good as it might have been)
Pascal
Assembler (various)
Natural
etc.

>  
>  Specifically for the Perl guy looking to see what's all the fuss with
>  Python, you should read the article by Eric Raymond:
>  http://pythonology.org/success&story=esr 
Yeah, I've read that one.
>  
>  
>  
> >Against Java in particular and Python is that I'm using Regular
> >Expressions, and unless REs have surfaced in Java since I learned it,
> >that's an after-market addon, and while I expect Python can do them, I
> >really don't want to confuse myself with yet another implementation of REs.
>  
>  
>  Java is a low-level langauage and not very comparable to the so-called
>  "scripting" languages like Perl, Python, or Ruby. 
I quite understand
that, but it is more portable than many, fairly easy 
to code and much safer to use than C or even C++.
>  
>  Python does have really nice REs.  Probably not quite as powerful as
>  Perl, but close, and perhaps not as "dense".  Python's REa are quite
>  respectable and pretty easy, especially when combined with many other
>  Pythonic techniques: http://docs.python.org/lib/module-re.html
>  
>  
>  Good luck with the PDF thing.  BTW, you may still want to look at
>  ReportLab if you're itching to dive into Python at some point.  Unlike
>  most PDF toolkits, ReportLab is surprisingly high-level and lets you
>  do some very impressive things quickly with very little code. 
I must. Reportlab is one of the toys I downloaded.

>   

-- 

Cheers
John

-- spambait
1aaaaaaa(a)computerdatasafe.com.au  Z1aaaaaaa(a)computerdatasafe.com.au
Tourist pics http://portgeographe.environmentaldisasters.cds.merseine.nu/

[Serge de Souza]

John Summerfied wrote:
>  Against Java in particular and Python is that I'm using Regular 
>  Expressions, and unless REs have surfaced in Java since I learned it, 
>  that's an after-market addon 
Java has had REs since version 1.4 (not an add-on)


http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/extra/regex/

Serge

[Dave Cross]

On 6/28/05, John Summerfied <debian(a)herakles.homelinux.org&gt; wrote:
>  
>  What I'd like to be able to do is create PDF documents rather than HTML
>  - HTML is fine for viewing onscreen, but pretty poor for printing, and
>  when I go on inspections I like to have bits of paper. 
Matt Sergeant's PDFLib module is pretty good.

http://search.cpan.org/dist/PDFLib/

Dave...

[John Summerfield]

Dave Cross wrote:
>  On 6/28/05, John Summerfied <debian(a)herakles.homelinux.org&gt;
> wrote:
>  
> >What I'd like to be able to do is create PDF documents rather than HTML
> >- HTML is fine for viewing onscreen, but pretty poor for printing, and
> >when I go on inspections I like to have bits of paper.
>  
>  
>  Matt Sergeant's PDFLib module is pretty good.
>  
>  http://search.cpan.org/dist/PDFLib/
>  
>  Dave...
>   
Thanks Dave.

That's a wrapper for "We support your chars! PDFlib products at half 
price for new EU members" commercial software. While it's foc for my 
purposes, I'd rather use something else if I can.



-- 

Cheers
John

-- spambait
1aaaaaaa(a)computerdatasafe.com.au  Z1aaaaaaa(a)computerdatasafe.com.au
Tourist pics http://portgeographe.environmentaldisasters.cds.merseine.nu/

[Mike McEldowney]

I would have a look at a combination of html2ps and ghostscript.

John Summerfied wrote:

>  I have a little perl that goes to a website (specifically 
>  www.realestate.com.au) and does a search.
>
>  It analyzes the response and creates a web page of my own design, 
>  complete with the thumbnail images.
>
>  My page has all the useful info I require, but without the ads. Also, 
>  I can automatically drop those properties "under offer" or "under 
>  contract." I'm not interested in those unless they come back on the 
>  market.
>
>  Extending it to follow selected links and create a series of 
>  "brochures" for each property is a matter of a little more similar 
>  code: not a difficult proposition.
>
>  What I'd like to be able to do is create PDF documents rather than 
>  HTML - HTML is fine for viewing onscreen, but pretty poor for 
>  printing, and when I go on inspections I like to have bits of paper.
>
>  What I don't know is what are suitable tools for the task. I suspect 
>  it will involve one of more of XML, tex and latex.
>
>  I've Googled and found some aging documents that might help (but I 
>  don't know how long it will take to learn enough XML etc), nor whether 
>  the art has moved on significantly.
>
>  I do not want to do the PDF creation manually, and this rules out OOo 
>  and similar.
>
>  I would like to be able to control image size (as in HTML) so all 
>  documents look similar, images don't split over pages and so on.
>
>  What I'd like is any hints, tutorials, samples and, of course, 
>  guidance on where to look for more information.
>
>
>  
-- 
Mike McEldowney
Information Systems Director / Information Security Officer
Delta Regional Medical Center
1400 East Union Street
Greenville, MS 38703
662-725-2075