ANNOUNCE: erlguten

[Chris Pressey]

> ErlGuten is now available at 
>
>	http://www.sics.se/~joe/erlguten-2.0/erlguten.html
>
> ErlGuten aims to produce typographic quality PDF from XML or
> a Erlang program.
>
> The release includes a library pdf.erl which can be used to create
> PDF directly from an ERlang program.

SWEET.

Good timing too.  A prospective client wants me to write some custom
job costing software - I want to do this project in Erlang, but was
worried that I'd have to resort to Visual Basic to fulfill his
requirement for high-quality printed reports under Windows.

I considered generating HTML, as I've used it in another project where
I had to produce something printable and non-ugly, but there are two
significant drawbacks:

1) HTML wasn't designed to be printed (no page breaks etc)
2) No automation (user must open HTML in browser and select 'Print')

Erlguten (or just pdf.erl) definately solves #1.

#2 can't be that hard - what would be most excellent would be able to
say something like pdf:print(Document, PrinterName) and have this work
in a platform-independent way.

Under unix it should be easy (I think?) if the spool is properly set up
to recognize PDF.  Under Windows, it might be a bit hellish...

Although, hmmm!  I just discovered that I can shell "acroread.exe /p
filename.pdf" and have it pop up a 'Print' dialog box - clicking 'OK'
sends it to the default printer - definately good enough for now.

Thank you, Joe.  I feel I owe you more than a few beer :)

-Chris


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