Re: First time using Perl & PDF::API2

On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 07:10 -0700, ChrisC wrote:

> Hi!,
> 
> Not sure if using PDF::API2 is  a good choice or not.  Little to no
> doc.

Yeah it's very powerful, and *very* poorly documented. What's worse, one
of the best tutorials ( http://rick.measham.id.au/pdf-api2/ ) has a big
photo of John f'n Howard in it. There's no need to immortalise that war
criminal.

> In the "sub paging " I create the next page, but the
> script does not print in the next page.  Do I have to tell it to print
> on page 2?  If so how?

For each page, you have to set up page dimensions, create new text and
graphics objects, eg:

# Set page dimensions
$page->mediabox( $self->{page_width}, $self->{page_height} );

# Create a new txt object for the page
$self->{txt} = $page->text;

# Set y to the top of the page
$self->{y} = $self->{page_height} - $self->{upper_margin};

# Create a new gfx object for our lines
$self->{line} = $page->gfx;

> How do I add an image, jpg etc.

$gfx->image(
    $image,                     # The image
    $img_x_pos,                 # X
    $img_y_pos,                 # Y
    $imgdata->{scale_ratio}     # scale
);

You might want to look at my project, PDF::ReportWriter. It uses
PDF::API2 to produce reports. It simplifies things considerably, does
page breaking for you, grouping, etc. You can also use it just to render
text ( keep calling $report->render_data with new text ). I use it for
everything from Access-like reports to producing mail-merge letters ( it
does alignment, justification, etc as well ).

I would point you to my webpage, but I accidentally lost everything
during a server upgrade, so you'll have to get it from CPAN. You can
either use it directly, or view the source to see how to use PDF::API2.

Let me know if you have any other questions, feature requests, etc.

Dan

--
Daniel Kasak
IT Developer
NUS Consulting Group
Level 5, 77 Pacific Highway
North Sydney, NSW, Australia 2060
T: (+61) 2 9922-7676 / F: (+61) 2
9922 7989
email: [email protected]
website:
http://www.nusconsulting.com.au