Perhaps you should look at PDF::Template instead. It is designed to do this sort of thing.

  use PDF::Template

  my $pdf = PDF::Template->new(
     filename => 'some_template.xml',
  );

  $pdf->write_file('some_file.pdf');
[download]

With a template like:

<pdftemplate pagesize="Letter" h='8'>
 <loop name="FOO">
  <pagedef>
    <font face="Times-Roman">
      <row>
        <textbox w="80%"><var name="name"/></textbox>
        <textbox w="20%"><var name="number"/></textbox>
      </row>
    </font>
  </pagedef>
 </loop>
</pdftemplate>
[download]

• Acrobat JavaScript: gives the methods
• Acrobat VisualBasic: shows you how to get the JSObject through OLE. Should be easy(-ish) to translate this to Perl.

I've used this module and it looks like this is the best way to do what I need to do. The problem is getting the PDF to print on its own without the user having to open the file and print it. I've looked in to Win32::Printer but unfortunately it looks like the ppm from ActiveState is corrupted. It wont install. I tried downloading it from CPAN and installing it using nmake but since I don't have a compiler it blows up. Wasx.net looks like its dead so I can't get it from there either.


BMaximus

Do you need to create pdf files or just print them (it sounds like you have the first covered and are just wondering about the second)? If you just need to print it then the the first reply had the answer:

AcroRd32.exe /t path "printername" "drivername" "portname" 
Initiates Adobe Reader and prints a file, whose path must be fully spe
+cified, while suppressing the Print dialog box.
[download]

I know it's not OLE, but it ought to work :-)

Also, there's another version of the Win32::Printer ppm in the Kobes repository.

Actually you dont even need OLE to do this. There is a Win32 API call "ShellExecute" exported by shell32.dll. Basically you pick a file and what you want to do with it (open print etc) and it goes and looks up how to do it from the registry, starts the appropriate application and tells the application to perform the action. These actions are what you see as the first options in the right click context menu for the file that you want to perform the action on.

Knowing this I did a search for on Google and found this script by Brad Fitzpatrick (the livejournal guy). I then modified it and tested it on my computer and it works.

#!c:/perl/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Win32::API;

my $filename = "foobar.pdf";

my $shellopen = new Win32::API("shell32", "ShellExecute", 
                             ['N', 'P', 'P', 'P', 'P', 'I'],
                              'N');

$shellopen->Call(0, "print", $filename, 0, 0, 0);
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You might have to install Win32::API but I had no trouble doing this with the ppm in the latest 5.8 perl from Activestate. Let me know if you have problems.

Not so. I did find that and it didn't have the answer I needed. That document was more like a FAQ than a list of methods. It was useless.


BMaximus

Hi,

Looks like this is part of Adobe's Developer accounts Adobe SDK which includes the methods that are visible via OLE. It is not free.

Hope this helps

Jason L. Froebe

Team Sybase member

No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil, Stargate SG-1