I'd suggest extracting the data from the DB, writing it to an intermediate format (TeX or LaTeX would be very much appropriate, I think), then printing the generated document in the usual way.

If you want to do PDF, Text::PDF looks useful.

--
The hell with paco, vote for Erudil!
:wq

Most printers know by default how to print plain text, PostScript, and perhaps some proprietary format. Not that it really matters for a user what a printer can print, as all the translation is done by the print server. So, you either have to configure the print server to filter PNG images into a format the printer understands, or you have to translate your PNG image to a format your printer server knows how to handle.

And that's about all there can be said about it. How to configure a print server varies wildly from system to system. Your best resource would be to talk to your system adminstrator. Bring beer. Offer sushi.

Abigail

~Particle *accelerates*

As other users have pointed out this is not really a Perl issue. If you have a Perl script that creates the text and pictures, then you will need to:

• Arrange the graphics within the text so that things print correctly. You could do this by outputing HTML from your Perl script (which has data + formatting). There are modules which would help you do that (you can even use just the printing functions from the CGI module).
• Then you have to convert it to a printer friendly format. Use a system utility to convert from HTML to postscript. (you can try to see if netscape will print it out in the background for you through command line parameters).
• Send it to the printer. If it is an HP printer, then it can deal with postscript. If it is connected through jet-Direct then you need to setup a remote printer (a breeze to do if you read man printcap or if you have some friendly linux distribution installed.

It should not prove a daunting task, but it lies somewhat outside the Perl domain (and I don't recommend writing a Perl driver for your HP).

-- termix