Re: creating good-looking PDF documents

[Marc Balmer <marc@...>]

Am 29.11.10 21:01, schrieb Lorenzo Donati:
> Hi List!
> 
> I'd like to create good-looking PDF documents using data obtained from
> Lua (parsing and processing various data sources).
> 
> The documents I want to produce should allow (possibly nested) tables
> with borders, embedded images and text with different fonts.
> 
> The approach I tried was to create an HTML file from Lua (to be later
> "printed" with PDFCreator to generate the PDFs), but the results were
> disappointing: the html files were rendered quite differently depending
> on the browser (especially tables with borders) and the spacings were a
> pain to get right (the tables did really look ugly).
> 
> I chose HTML+CSS because it is very easy to generate from Lua and I
> already know it somewhat, although I'm not a master, but now I fear that
> my choice was a wrong one, so I wonder whether a different document
> format or approach could be more suitable.
> 
> I'd like something which is not too difficult to learn (I don't know PDF
> format, but I gathered that it wouldn't be easily generated from Lua).
> 
> Maybe I should use some simple formats (XML based? I could cope with XML
> if its format is not too complex) and then convert it to PDF with some
> tool (please, consider that only free tools are viable for me)?
> 
> I thought I could generate an ODT file (open document text - as in
> openoffice), but its internal format is quite a mess (I collected some
> info on how to do that, but it's rather cumbersome and seems to require
> quite a long time commitment).
> 
> I hope there is a better and simpler alternative.
> Ideally all tools should be amenable to be carried away on a portable
> HD, since I may be needed to generate the documents on computers (using
> Windows XP as OS) different from my usual workstation, and where I could
> not install new software.
> 
> 
> Any suggestion or pointer greatly appreciated!
> Thank you very much in advance.

LuaTeX is your friend.  Or just use Lua to produce LaTeX markup and
process it the isial way.

- Marc Balmer