mandog has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:
Has anyone experience to share with PDF::Template or PDF::Report?
Has anybody gotten printed mailing labels from a browser with HTML and CSS?
We want to print Avery laminated name badges #05362 from a web browser. The name badge needs a barcode, some text and a picture of a person.
It is important that we print where we are supposed to and waste a minimum of name badges at $1 each. We can specify that a particular browser be used. Ideally we'd like this done relatively quickly
Some possibilities are:
An ASCII dump that can be copied and pasted into an MS Mail Merge or the like. This would be pretty kludgy as the users would have to copy and paste pictures into MS word tables by hand.
PDF::Create This module is recommended a few times on this site, but it doesn't support pictures and there are complaints that it is no longer supported
Cascading Style Sheets & HTML::Template Since CSS allows elements to be placed with precision of 1/72 of an inch and we can restrict the user to one browser, this seems doable...
Latex has some strong supporters. However it looks like it might take longer to learn than other solutions. It might require a bunch of system("latex_thing -f foo.data")calls
PDF::Template A lot like HTML::Template, allows more separation between interface and code. Doesn't support any but the core PDF fonts on LINUX, but we can make the barcode a image with something like this snippit from Mr. Muskrat
PDF::Report seems a little simpler than PDF::Template, but adding a (barcode) font is not obvious from the docs. Presentation and application logic are mixed. Based on the well received PDF::API2 module
Other solutions like RTF::Document and pdf on the fly don't handle people's pictures in a way that is obviousl to me.These nodes:
...have some helpful info but nothing on PDF::Report and PDF::Template
Barring new info from y'all, we're probably going play simulataniously with HTML/CSS, PDF::Template and PDF::Report until a winner emerges
email: mandog