Hey, as long as you're addressing PDF templating with a complete rewrite, I have a humble request (that is, one I'm not nearly good enough to implement myself if I *did* have the time). I'd like to see a PostScript::Template module, and then have the PDF::Template module implement the same interface for similar capabilities. Obviously, the PDF module would also have more features and options, because PDF can do a bit more than PS.

This would make it really easy to write code that generates PS files for whatever reason (say as targets to a PostScript printer), and trivially cause that code to write a PDF instead. It would be as simple as, say:

my $writer;
if ($cgi->param('mode') eq 'pdf') {
   $writer = PDF::Template->new(@params);
}
elsif ($cgi->param('mode') eq 'ps') {
   $writer = PS::Template->new(@params);
}
else {
   ht_error("I don't know about mode '".$cgi->param('mode')."'");
}
[download]

I realize that's quite a bit more work. All I can offer is that I would use it almost immediately, and be a good source of test-driven bug reports.

tilly and dragonchild both make excellent points below. I would still very much like a way to specify whether I'm dealing with PS or PDF inside a templating system. dragonchild's solution re. placement is probably for the best. tilly's solution works well for *NIX applications, but (a)I'm cautious about depending on external apps, and (b)there's never a guarantee that thing work the same on Win32. All that said, this node's specific request is withdrawn.