I wrote a PDF module a long time ago and have been using it for personal use. Recently I added html-like tables( has column and row spanning) to it and a few other items. Actually, I keep adding to it as I see reason to. A friend wanted to use it to create bi-lingual Biblical text and so I added unicode support and embeded TrueType fonts(which was lots of fun). You see I had to use iText (java) extensively at work, but really wanted something vastly easier to use for Perl, so I developed my own both as an exercise in learning the PDF Spec better and some Perl OOP. It's only real dependancy is Compress::Zlib. If you want to try it let me know. I call it MoosePdf, silly I know. But I gave it a really terse yet simple and IMHO intuitive syntax. For instance, one way to do the above program with just the raw text and image operators (with a table it would simpler) would be thus: 
use strict;
use DBI;
use MoosePdf;
my $pdf = new MoosePdf('myPdf.pdf');
my $page = $pdf->addPage(size=>'595x852', margins=> 72);
my $f  = $page->addFont("Helvetica");
my $fb = $page->addFont("Helvetica-Bold");
my $image = $page->addImage(file=>"santa.jpg"); #path
my $height = $image->getHeight;
$page->showImage( image=>$image, x=>100, y=> 100+$height);
$page->addText( text=>"Heading Here", x=>100, y=>100, font=>$fb, size=
+> 10 );
my $dbh=DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:database=voice:host=localhost","userna
+me","password") or die "$!\n";
my $sth=$dbh->prepare("select column1,column2,column3,column4,column5 
+from test") or die "$!\n";
$sth->execute() or die "$!\n";
my $y = 750;
while (my @row=$sth->fetchrow_array())
{
$y -= 45;
my $string=join(",",@row)."\n";
$page->addText( text=>$string, x=>100, y=>$y, font=>$f, size=> 10 );
if( $y < 100 ){
   $page = $pdf->AddPage(); #inherits from existing page
   $page->addText(text=>"Heading Here", font=>$fb, size=>10, x=>100, y
+=>800 );
   $y = 750;
}
}
$pdf->save();

[download]

Anyway, if you want to try it, msg me with your email and I will send it and some examples to you if you will agree to not redistribute it as it needs more documentation.

JamesNC

In reply to Re^2: Putting text and images in PDFs using PDF::API2 by JamesNC
in thread Putting text and images in PDFs using PDF::API2 by leighsharpe

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