Whoops! Top-post!
Chris,
Yes, I did search CPAN and found a lot of interesting modules.
I will mention that I had asked for ideas and insights, over and above of
just plain module names. I guess you often assume people do not search
CPAN, and hence I can understand the frustration your email seems to
portray. I do value your comments.
As far as free solutions, the Big Badass is PDF::API2. There are many users,
a zillion modules, and a mailing list. There are several modules that are
built on top of this, to relieve the difficulty of using it. I'm not so sure they
make sense to use.
The problem is that it has only very recently started to include documentation.
It's as complex as PDF itself, and assumes that you are familiar with the gigantic
PDF Reference. The author knows PDF inside and out, but IMHO doesn't get that
his user base is struggling, and needs dox more than they need attittude.
Making very simple documents is easy, using a couple of the simpler modules,
but once you want to stretch out it becomes very heavy. The samples are all
minimal, and don't always address a solution that anyone would want to
use. [Some of them have even used outdated APIs.]
The O'Reilly book "Web Graphics Programming" has a chapter on using the
module, but they are simplistic examples for the most part. However, when they
give you soup, you take the soup.
The author is starting to add dox, so that's a step in the right direction. I think the
best thing to do is to plan on a big learning curve, including (at least) learning the
terminology and models from the PDF Reference (which is online).
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