be emailed. Automatic page calculation would be great, and I'd like to include generated and static images (e.g. graphs and logos).
we use cl-typesetting and cl-pdf.
page numbers are *kludged* by generating the entire document twice...
unicode characters were a headache, but this might be fixed since then.
we had some major headaches with this framework, because these libraries have a tendency to fail quietly (e.g. numbers are quietly not rendered into table cells when they don't fit).
if i were to start today, i'd either generate libreoffice's xml format (you can exec commandline tools to generate pdf); or look into using latex, although i have zero first-hand experience with it.
the former, if libreoffice was just a little bit smarter, could yield a brilliant templating engine:
- you edit the initial template with libreoffice
- save it in xml
- using xml namespaces, you introduce your "unquote"'s that generate the dynamic part. these chunks may contain libreoffice xml nodes down deep somewhere, which LO should be smart enough to display (e.g. when generating a table, then the xml node describing a literal table cell would be lying somewhere under the unquote xml nodes. LO could provide a list of nodes it understands for editing, and leave xml nodes it doesn't understand untouched.)
- hand out the template for the users for editing with LO
we have something less sophisticated (no WYSIWYG editing under the first unquote). unfortunately LO is not too friendly for such use-cases (e.g. no unnamed inline styles; xml node order matters and styles must be emitted first. argh...)