[erlang-questions] ErlGuten

[lloyd@REDACTED]

Hi Theepan,

1. If you look at ErlGuten source, you'll see that function documentation is fairly minimal and many parameters have single character names with little to no documentation. This makes maintenance and revision very difficult. I consider the core ErlGuten modules diamonds-in-the-rough.

I also found the high-level page make-up functions provided by Hugh and Carl limited with respect to professional page make-up and, to me at least, a bit confusing. 

But erlpress_core owes a deep debt and much gratitude to the ErlGuten lineage. 

erlpress_core is based on Joe's font-handling, justification, and XML parsing code with few if any changes. But it provides map structures to represent nearly all of the PDF objects represented in eg_pdf_op.erl. These map structures incorporate many default parameters so generating PDF documents is syntactically simple and consistent without sacrificing expressive flexibility. You can easily customize display by instantiating map parameters with your own values. 

You can see most of the PDF objects currently supported by erlpress_core, including boxed text, justification options, and various line and text objects, demonstrated in ep_show_n_tell.pdf and the source in ep_show_n_tell.erl.

If you look at the map definitions of the various PDF objects, you'll see how to customize display.

At some point if would be good to re-write the base Erlguten modules with more explicit function and parameter documentation, but I'm not up to that at this point. But, anyone looking for a challenge is free to jump in.

I'm currently working on tables and text flow across pages (think reports and book chapters). Hope to deliver these features plus much code polishing in the next release coming "real soon now."

High on my wish/to-do list are:

-- Easy-to_use page-grid design functions
-- Imposition (printing multiple page impressions on a single sheet of paper stock)
-- Articles and beads (think text jumping across  columns and pages)
-- Easy-to-use and expressive page make-up functions
-- Example templates for various print formats
-- Markdown input
-- Support of TTF and OTF fonts

Joe Armstrong expressed the following goal when he first announced ErlGuten: 

"Better than TeX." 

That's a tall order, yet to be realized. My hope is that erlpress will move the ball further down the field.

2. I haven't done anything with image formats beyond what you'll find in eg_pdf_image.erl. I'd welcome work in that direction.

3. erlpress_core is still at Version 0.01. It's just out. I'm working toward sufficient functionality and stability to support a web application that we have currently under development. 

4. I developed erlpress_core on Erlang/OTP 19. It does require support for maps.

I see the erlpress_core library as a valuable library for embedding PDF generation into Erlang applications and as the basis for many exciting Erlang-based print production tools.

So, Treepan, I appreciate your interest and would welcome your involvement in testing and feature development. 

I would jump for joy if some Erlang guru were to step forward take on the TTF/OTF support issue. I've done some research and have a few ideas on how expanded font support might be accomplished, but have too little time over the next several months to dig into it.

Incidentally, in my previous post my iPad decided it was smarter than me and erroneously corrected my GitHUb address.it should be writersglen/erlPress_core. 

My intention is to bag the camel case in my next release with luck in a week or two so it should look like writersglen/erlpress_core.

All the best,

Lloyd
   

-----Original Message-----
From: "Theepan" <vasdeveloper@REDACTED>
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2018 3:59pm
To: lloyd@REDACTED
Cc: "Erlang Questions Mailing List" <erlang-questions@REDACTED>, "Joe Armstrong" <erlang@REDACTED>
Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] ErlGuten

Hi Lloyd,

Thank you for your response. I have some quick clarifications --

* What are the major improvements made on the source ErlGuten? Did you
improve support to different image formats? Any critical bugs fixed?
* Is erlPress_core used in commercial applications, specifically of high
throughput types?
* What is the minimum erlang/OTP version required?

Best,
Theepan






On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 6:36 AM Lloyd R. Prentice <lloyd@REDACTED>
wrote:

> Hi Thepan,
>
> I’ve undertaken a major revision of ErlGuten called erlPress_core—
> announced it on Erlang questions several weeks ago.  It’s available from
> GitHub as Writersglen/erlPress_core. I think you’ll find it much more
> accessible than the ErlGutens.
>
> I’ve since been polishing up the code and adding a few new features. After
> the launch I learned that camel case is not conventional usage when it
> comes to the names of Erlang applications and libraries. So I plan to
> release the updated version as erlpress_core. With smooth sailing I hope to
> release sometime this week or next.
>
> All the best,
>
> Lloyd
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Sep 23, 2018, at 8:30 PM, Theepan <vasdeveloper@REDACTED> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Team,
>
> I see many forks of ErlGuten. Which one is the latest, most stable and
> widely used?
>
> https://github.com/richcarl/erlguten
> https://github.com/CarlWright/NGerlguten
> https://github.com/hwatkins/erlguten/commits/master
>
> Best,
> Theepan
>
>
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