I need to produce some documents which I could usefully script the creation
of. As usual my thoughts move to Pike and I wonder if anyone has any
experience or just good ideas.
The first job is a set of contracts and bills which up to now have been
written laboriously in a word processor, although the data is in a spread
sheet for 10-20 individuals and it makes you wish computers had been
invented when you watch the operator cutting and pasting.
The second job is a set of multiple choice exams which begin with the
questions and answers in .txt files and needs to end with and A4 document
with 2 columns of questions and answers, with the questions and answers in
a different order for each of a couple of hundred candidates.
Relying on my own experience I might save a standard document for the first
problem as a .rtf with eg. ZZZ_NAME which can be searched for and replaced
with a different person's name in each document.
For the second I might even look back at LaTex as something I could get Pike
to write to be further processed and on to the printer.
Does anyone have any better, or just different ideas? What can the PDF
module do? Does anyone have any examples? Is anyone using Pike to output
anything directly to a CUPS or network printer?
Yours
Ian
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