Printing GIF/PNG in the middle of a text report

jwills has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Printing GIF/PNG in the middle of a text report by FoxtrotUniform (Prior) on May 30, 2002 at 18:48 UTC
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`	[reply]
Re: Printing GIF/PNG to a HP printer by Abigail-II (Bishop) on May 30, 2002 at 16:44 UTC
There isn't much Perl about this question. 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	[reply]
Re: Printing GIF/PNG in the middle of a text report by Matts (Deacon) on May 30, 2002 at 18:45 UTC
Why not create LaTeX from perl and then print it via latex commands?	[reply]
Re: Printing GIF/PNG in the middle of a text report by tomhukins (Curate) on May 30, 2002 at 19:05 UTC
In addition to others' comments, you might find GD::Barcode useful for creating the barcode images.	[reply]
Re: Printing GIF/PNG in the middle of a text report by particle (Vicar) on May 30, 2002 at 19:30 UTC
how is this question different from (dup) Printing GIF/PNG to a HP printer (except that you logged in?) in the future, please follow up on the same thread. ~Particle accelerates	[reply]
Re: Printing GIF/PNG to a HP printer by termix (Beadle) on May 30, 2002 at 18:23 UTC
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	[reply] [d/l]