This class is a utility for use with the pdfapi2 or pdfbuilder module from cpan. Sine its initial release, i have found it to be easy to use to produce simple documents, over every aspect of my pdf creation, from image contact sheets, to relatively complex tabulated data. Techniques for data recognition, parsing, transformation and filtering. Martin fowler gave me a hard time for kata02, complaining that it was yet another singlefunction, academic exercise. Pdftable a utility class for building table layouts in. Rather than try to sort that out, i decided to use a clean system instead. This book is about doing that, many of the different forms that that can take, and some of the many techniques that perl and a pragmatic approach make available to do that. People were kind enough to say nice things about it. Perl module for creation and modification of pdf files. Turns out, embedding a ttf into a pdf isnt that difficult. It can be used to display text data in a table layout within a pdf. It features support for the 14 base pdf core fonts, truetype fonts, and adobetype1, with unicode mappings, embedding o. If you were using perl, you could use the pdfreuse library or pdfapi2 to do all kinds of crap.
Pdf api2 will aim to support all major perl versions that were released in the past six years, plus one, in order to continue working for the life of most longtermstable lts server distributions. In fact, the same characteristics that make perl ideal for cgi programming also make it. According to the author, over the last five years there has been an explosion of interest in perl. Dave cross has put together a friendly and handy compendium of techniques, tricks, and best practices. Pdfapi2 facilitates the creation and modification of. Really, any language with a good support for regular expressions, dynamic data structures, and string handling is going to be acceptable.
Pdf can embed all its data into a single file, from colors and text to the font. Getssets the default value for a behaviour of pdfapi2. Installing pdfapi2 is beyond the scope of this document, however like all perl modules on cpan, you can use the following command from the prompt on any linux or other unix variant system. Common munging operations include removing punctuation or. Pdfapi2 a perl module chain to faciliate the creation and. I know i lost a few trying to get the thing to work. Perl has a long and glorious history of being a goto language for data munging. Back on the palette, you find a handy gear called list to. If its not a valid pdf, the libraries throw all kinds of errors when you attempt to open the file. Finding examples of working with truetype fonts in api2 is like pulling teeth. Written by perl expert dave cross and now available for free. It is sometimes used for vague data transformation steps that are not yet clear to the speaker.
If you need to work with complex data formats it will teach you how to do that and. This process can be a laborious task without the right tools. Free download data munging with perl in pdf computing savvy. Content methods for adding graphics and text to a pdf. Pdfapi3 next version after pdfapi2 pdfapi3compatapi2 a perl module chain to faciliate the creation and modification of highquality portable document format aka. You will learn how to decouple the various stages of munging programs, how to design data structures, how to emulate the unix filter model, etc. Pdfapi2 will aim to support all major perl versions that were released in the past six years, plus one, in order to continue working for the life of most longtermstable lts server distributions. The devperl category contains libraries and utilities relevant to the perl programming language. With that, you can even look at things like the number of pages, the content on the pages, etc. Optional if you want to use roman numerals when numbering pages. Weve all been therea data translation problem rears its head and you reach for your toolkit of perl snippets.
Rather than cluttering up the following documentation with or pdfbuilder additions, wherever it refers to pdfapi2, understand that you can substitute pdfbuilder to. Facilitates the creation and modification of pdf files in the gentoo packages database. Nine out of ten more like ninetynine out of onehundred jobs in perl involve taking some sort of raw data, munging it, and spitting it out to some other process. It helps programmers write data conversion programs quickly.
Below is complete minimal code required to create a single pdf file using perl module pdfapi2. Pdfapi2 is the next generation of textpdfapi, a perl modulechain that facilitates the creation and modification of pdf files. Pdfapi3compatapi2 a perl module chain to faciliate. It discusses general munging techniques and how to think about data munging problems. The help page tells you its a record connector that passes data using perl hashes rather than arrays. Heres an exercise in three parts to do with real world data. Perl on my work system is jacked, thanks to a bunch of oracle files for perl 5. In rhel and related distros such as fedora and centos perl module packages follow the naming convention of perlmodulename so for instance perlpdfapi2 for the pdfapi2 module. Pdftable a utility class for building table layouts in a pdfapi2 or pdfbuilder object. Data munging with perl by davorg chancellor on feb 08, at the book was published inso as far as technology books go, its very old. Many modules are included in the base distribution and there are even more in the epel addon repository. Data munging with perl how is data munging with perl. The author gives you enough information, and background to start working with the more.
Data munging is basically the hip term for cleaning up a messy data set. Perl excels at this, and the author shows you the how and. Pdfapi2 facilitates the creation and modification of pdf files. Written by perl expert dave cross and now available for free download. Perl api2 font examples justifying text without scaling. It is usually used in conjunction with another hip term data science which is basically data analysis.
Below is complete minimal code required to create a single pdf file using perl module pdf api2. Suitable for raw novices to experienced intermediates, data munging with perl is a gentle but firm romp from flat text, past structured and binary files, to the realm of custom parsers. Mung is computer jargon for a series of potentially destructive or irrevocable changes to a piece of data or a file. A perl module chain to faciliate the creation and modification of highquality portable document format aka. Generatingpdffilesfromperl letsstartwithnothingandseeifwecanwindupwithsomething.
Pdfapi2 perl package manager index ppm activestate code. Perl excels at this, and the author shows you the how and the why. Data munging with perl book shows you how to process data productively with perl. For those who dont know, munging data means taking data from one format and putting it into another.
Corefont module for using the 14 pdf builtin fonts. Pdfapi2, facilitates the creation and modification of pdf files. Note that although this page shows the status of all builds of this package in ppm, including those available with the free community edition of activeperl, manually downloading modules ppmx package files is possible only with a business edition license. Many years ago, i wrote a book called data munging with perl. Short history first code implemented based on pdflib0. I am trying to extract text from pdf files using perl. The pdf i was using as a test case threw an error, which i could eliminate if i saved it as an older pdf version 1. And people dont have to pay a lot of money for a rather out of date book. Marshall 1999 html perl notes contents introduction to perl. The common interface used for data munging is often excel, which lacks the sophistication for collaboration and automation to make the process efficient. If you want to keep using an old pdfapi2, use pdfreport 1.