I have a little perl that goes to a website (specifically
www.realestate.com.au) and does a search.
It analyzes the response and creates a web page of my own design,
complete with the thumbnail images.
My page has all the useful info I require, but without the ads. Also, I
can automatically drop those properties "under offer" or "under
contract." I'm not interested in those unless they come back on the market.
Extending it to follow selected links and create a series of "brochures"
for each property is a matter of a little more similar code: not a
difficult proposition.
What I'd like to be able to do is create PDF documents rather than HTML
- HTML is fine for viewing onscreen, but pretty poor for printing, and
when I go on inspections I like to have bits of paper.
What I don't know is what are suitable tools for the task. I suspect it
will involve one of more of XML, tex and latex.
I've Googled and found some aging documents that might help (but I don't
know how long it will take to learn enough XML etc), nor whether the art
has moved on significantly.
I do not want to do the PDF creation manually, and this rules out OOo
and similar.
I would like to be able to control image size (as in HTML) so all
documents look similar, images don't split over pages and so on.
What I'd like is any hints, tutorials, samples and, of course, guidance
on where to look for more information.
--
Cheers
John
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