KISS I reckon. If Word can do it then why not save yourself the pain and just script it....

use Win32::OLE;

# start Word program die if unable to
$word = Win32::OLE->new('Word.Application', sub { $_[0]->Quit; } ) 
or die 'Cannot start Word';

# let's watch
$word->{'Visible'} = 1; 

# Create new document
my $d = $word->Documents->Add;

# define selection
my $s = $word->Selection;

my @lines = (
    "This is test line 1",
    "This is test line 2",
    "This is test line 3",
);

# $c is the color
# $start is the start of Range
# $end is the end of Range
# $r is the Range object
my ($c, $start, $end, $r) = (2, 0, 0, );
for my $line (@lines) { 
    $end += length($line) + 1;
    $s->TypeText($line);
    # define the Range
    $r = $d->Range($start, $end);
    # Set font properties
    $r->Font->{Size} = 18;
    $r->Font->{ColorIndex} = $c++;
    $r->Font->{Name} = 'Courier New';
    $s->TypeText("\n");
    $start = $end;
}

# TIMTOWTDI but this will overwrite the above
#my $r = $doc->{Content};
#$r->{Text} = 'Hello World!';
#$r->InsertParagraphAfter();
#$r->InsertParagraphAfter();
#$r->InsertAfter('Bye!');

# here is how to print a document
$word->ActiveDocument->PrintOut({
    Background => 0,
    Append     => 0,
    Range      => wdPrintAllDocument,
    Item       => wdPrintDocumentContent,
    Copies     => 1,
    PageType   => wdPrintAllPages,
}); 

# save the file without a prompt
$word->WordBasic->FileSaveAs("c:\\test.doc");

# have a quick look at the objects and properties
# don't try to Dumper the whole thing unless you have time and memory+
++
print "Range: $_ => $r->{$_}\n" for sort keys %$r;
print "Doc: $_ => $d->{$_}\n"   for sort keys %$d;


# house keeping, clean up our instances
$d->Close();
$word->Quit();
undef $word;
[download]

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

Very nice—that's most of what I need in your sample.

I did some Word scripting before, for my C++ Color Pretty Printer. But it has a problem: if I insert too much, it gets in a bad mood. I don't remember the details, but it basically doesn't work any more. The work-around is to Save every few lines of inserting, which doesn't do wonders for its already slow speed.

It's probably the simplest thing for a directory-listing label, though. I think I'll start with your code.

Though the Excel idea is also pretty nice, since the data is tabular.

—John

Just a (possibly irrelvant) thought: Please don't make WinWord/Office a requirement if you're going to distribute this script.


C.

Perhaps an even simpler approach would be to output HTML/CSS to a file and then automate IE to open and print the file. Word could be used with HTML too, but the results should be more accurate using IE.

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma

okay - i guess that makes my first post obsolete.
these modules (seem to) rock!
is there any easy way to print the generated .pdfs without having to open them in a browser or Acrobat Reader?
beacause if there is, i have some serious re-coding to to do!

I use ghostscript for batch processing of PDF and Postscript documents. It is easy to make printouts, create bitmaps, perform conversions, etc.

Ghostscript is a very active project at SourceForge

I found but have not tried a Ghostscript perl module on the news and community site for Ghostscript.

These tools are multiplatform. I have had great success with them!

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma

Further to my HTML suggestion (above), I've poked around in the windows explorer 'File Types' dialog and discovered that you can print an HTML document from the command line using this command:

When you run that, an MS Word window appears, opens the file, prints it and exits. So obviously this option assumes you have Word.

On a machine without MS Office installed, I found this command associated with the HTML Print action:

I found that this command only worked if the filename was an absolute pathname (perhaps a URL would work too). It had the advantage of using the fonts defined in the HTML/CSS, which the Word command did not. It had the disadvantage of popping up a print dialog which you have to click OK on - there may be some way to automate that.

Hmm, very nice. HTML is easy to generate, but I'd need to figure out enough style stuff to get the sizes right.