This section describes how a Perl program is used to control the PDF documents generation process
Introduction to Perl
Perl is the most flexible scripting language that you can use for managing text files and executing other programs.
If you want to try it, follow these steps:
1. Download ActivePerl from http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/.
2. Install it by following the installation instructions.
3. Try the hello.pl program:
print "Hello world!\n";
3. Try the dir.pl program with executes another program through the system function:
system("dir \\");
pdf.pl - A Perl Program to Generate PDF Documents
In order to perform the steps described in the previous section, I wrote a Perl program called pdf.pl.
You can run pdf.pl with 3 command options:
1. "pdf.pl compile" - It does the following steps to generate Web page files:
Validating the book source files to make sure they are well formed XML files.
Merging multiple book source files into a single source file, if there a single book is stored in multiple source files.
Splitting the source file into multiple XML files with one file per chapter and per section.
2. "pdf.pl link" - It works on all XML files to evaluate variables and build hyper links.
3. "pdf.pl finish" - It does the following final steps:
Merging all XML files back into a single final XML file.
Transforming the final XML file to an XSL-FO document.
