[cairo] Not outputting complex documents in cairo

LRN lrn1986 at gmail.com
Sun Dec 27 12:25:18 PST 2015


On 27.12.2015 20:56, Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult wrote:
> On 25.12.2015 01:35, LRN wrote:
> 
>> However, making a document out of a drawing requires extra stuff that i
>> don't draw with cairo (tables and other textual things) and i don't really
>> want to do page layout all by myself.
> 
> Sounds like a task for LaTeX.
> 
>> So i was thinking along the lines of making some kind of template using
>> external applications (editors), and then just using PDF, SVG, or PS
>> backend to output the drawn parts and use these (as well as some of the
>> original data used in the drawing process) to fill out the empty spaces
>> left in the template.
> 
> Why not just drawing the graphics as svg, convert them into ps/eps or
> latex figures and do the typesetting completely in latex ?

I like the ODF solution (proposed in this thread) better, because:
1) I know LibreOffice wa-a-ay better than i know LaTeX.
2) A layperson can do simple editing to an ODF. OTOH, a layperson will know
absolutely nothing about doing *anything* with LaTeX (in fact, the
particular user i'm targeting right now refused to use LaTeX for some other
task in the past, claiming that it's beyond his understanding).
3) W32 is the primary target platform for me right now. LaTeX software for
W32 is available, IIRC, but can be somewhat underdeveloped. OTOH,
LibreOffice for W32 is very well-supported.

So right now my plan is to create a template ODF with specially-formatted
objects serving as placeholders, render into SVG and stick the SVG and the
data into a copy of the template, creating the final output file. I will
probably able to then use LibreOffice batch commandline interface to do
stuff (convert to PDF, print).

That said, LO is somewhat slow at rendering SVGs.

-- 
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