RTF::Writer 1.11

RTF::Writer is a Perl module for generating documents in Rich Text Format. SYNOPSIS use RTF::Writer; my $rtf = RTF::Writer->new_to_file("greetings.rtf"); $rtf->prolog( title => "Greetings, hyoomon" ); $rtf->number_pages; $rtf->paragraph( fs40bi, # 20pt, bold, italic "Hi there!" ); $rtf->close; This module is a class; an object belonging to this class acts like an output filehandle, and calling methods on it causes RTF text to be written. Incidentally, this module also exports a few useful functions, upon request. METHODS $h = RTF::Writer->new_to_file($filename); This creates a new RTF output stream object, such that sending text to this object will write to the filespec given. This is basically a wrapper around new_to_handle. If opening a write-handle to $filename fails (or if $filename is undef or zero-length), then a fatal error results. $h = RTF::Writer->new_to_handle(*FILEHANDLE); This creates a new RTF output stream object, such that sending text to this object will write to the filehandle given. The filehandle can be a glob (*FH) or a filehandle object (*FH{IO} or the value from IO::File->new(...)). $h = RTF::Writer->new_to_string($string); This creates a new RTF output stream object, such that sending text to this object will append to the string that youve passed a reference to. $h->print(...); This is the basic method for writing text to an RTF stream. This takes a list of items. Each item is either: a plain string, like "foon" In this case, the value is imputed to be a plaintext string, and an rtf-escaped version of it is written. For example "StuffnttUmmmn" causes Stuffline tab tab Ummline to be written. See rtfesc(x) for further details of escaping. a scalar-reference, like ul In this case, the value is imputed to be a reference to already escaped text. This is the basic way to emit RTF codes. Text passed this way will be written without any additional escaping. Unless $RTF::Writer::AUTO_NL (normally on) has been turned off, the item written will be followed with a (presumably harmless) newline character to delimit any code in there from any following text, if the last character of this string is a digit or a lowercase letter. This is so that (i, "foo!") emits i[newline]foo! (which does what you expected), instead of ifoo!, which looks like an RTF command "ifoo" followed by a plaintext "!". an array-reference, like [ ul, foo ] This emits an open-brace "{", as RTF uses for opening "groups" (generally for delimiting the effects of character-formatting commands like ul, or a few formatting commands like footnote); then it emits the items in the referred-to array; and then emits a closing "}". I intend this to be useful is making sure that you dont emit more open-braces than close-braces, since that usually makes RTF readers immediately reject such a file. You can nest these array-references, like: $h->print( col2, [ pard, "It is now ", [ f1, scalar(localtime), " local, or ", scalar(gmtime), " GMT.", ], " -- if youre ", [ i, "keeping track.", ], ], parpage, ); The return value of the print() method is currently always the value 1, although this may change. $h->prolog(...); This writes an RTF prolog to $h. You are free to make your own prolog using just $h->print(...your own code...), but I find in easier to automate this task, particularly with some sane defaults. Since emitting a prolog opens a "{"-group, calling $h->prolog(...) sets a flag in $h so that when you call $h->close(), a closing "}" will automatically be written before the stream object is actually closed. The options to the prolog() method are passed as a list of keys and values, for controlling the contents of the prolog written. The options are listed below, roughly with the most important options first. (Be careful with the spelling of these options. Some are rather odd, because they are (mostly) based on the name of the relevent RTF command, and a systematic naming scheme for commands is one thing you wont find in RTF!) fonts => [ "Courier New", "Georgia", "Whatever"...], This value is for the font table section of the prolog. If the value is an arrayref, then it should be a reference to an array whose items should be either plain text strings, like "Times Roman", which are the (unescaped) names of fonts; or the items in the array can be scalar-refs, for expressing RTF control words along with the (escaped) font name, as in froman Times New Roman. If the value of the "fonts" parameters is a scalar ref, then it is taken to be a reference to code of your own that expresses the whole font table. If you dont specify a value for the "font" option, then you get a font table with one entry, "Times New Roman". You should be sure to declare all fonts that you switch to in your document (as with f3, to change the current font to whats declared in entry 3 (counting from 0) in the font table). deff => INTEGER, This is for expressing, in the prolog, the font-table number of the default font for this document. The default is 0, which is an often useful value. colors => [ undef, [0,142,252], [200,32,0], ...], This value is for expressing the documents (generally optional) color table. If you stipulate an arrayref value, then each item of the array should be either an RGB triplet expressed as an arrayref like [200,32,0], or undef, for a null color-entry. If you stipulate a scalar-ref value for colors, then it is taken to be a reference to code of your own that expresses the whole font table. If you dont stipulate any value for colors, then you get a table consisting of three colors: null/default (undef), 100% red ([2550,0,0]), and 100% blue ([0,0,255]). You can freely ignore concerns of color tables if you dont use color-changing codes in your document (like cf2, to switch the text foreground color to whats declared at entry 2 (starting from 0) in the color table). stylesheet => STRING, filetbl => STRING, listtables => STRING, revtbl => STRING, These are for expressing, in the prolog, code constituting the documents style sheet, table-of-files, table-of-lists, and table-of-revisions, respectively. The default value of each of these is empty-string. None of these are needed by a typical RTF document. more_default => STRING, This is for inserting any additional code just after the deffN in the start of the prolog, before the font table. A common useful value here is deflang1033, to express the default language (1033 = RTFese for US English) for the document, although my reading of the RTF spec leads me to believe that this doesnt need to be in the prolog here (where many writers put it, as apparently accepted by many RTF readers), but should (instead?) go just after the prolog, with other "document formatting" commands described in the "Document Formatting Properties" section of the RTF Specification. doccomm => STRING, This value is for the "document comment" metainformation item in the prolog, which appears as the "Comment" field in the "File Properties" panel in MSWord, or as the "Abstract" field in the "File Properties" window in WordPerfect. If no value is specified, then RTF::Writer puts a string noting the value of $0 (typically the filespec to the current Perl program), and the version of RTF::Writer used. title => STRING, subject => STRING, author => STRING, manager => STRING, company => STRING, operator => STRING, category => STRING, keywords => STRING, hlinkbase => STRING, comment => STRING, These are for stipulating the string values of these various optional document metainformation items. operator is for the name of the person who last made changes to the document; hlinkbase is which is the URL or path that is used for for resolving any all relative hyperlinks in the document; comment is reportedly just ignored (cf. the doccomm attribute, which is not ignored); and you can guess the rest. The meanings of all of these are explained in greater detail in the RTF spec. revtim => EPOCH_NUMBER, This value is for the document metainformation section of the prolog. It signifies the last-modified time of the document. EPOCH_NUMBER is the number of seconds since the epoch, such as one gets from (stat($thing)[9]) or time(); or you may pass a reference a timelist, like [localtime($whatever)]. If no defined value for revtime is stipulated in the call to prolog(...) then the current value of time() is used. Explicitly pass a value of undef to suppress emitting any creatim value. creatim => EPOCH_NUMBER, This value is for the document metainformation section of the prolog. It signifies the last-modified time of the document. If no defined value for creatim is stipulated in the call to prolog(...) then the current value of time() is used. Explicitly pass a value of undef to suppress emitting any creatim value. printim => EPOCH_NUMBER, This value is for the document metainformation section of the prolog. It signifies the time when this document was last printed. If you dont stipulate a defined value here, no printim metainformation is written. buptim => EPOCH_NUMBER, This value is for the document metainformation section of the prolog. It signifies the "backup time" of this document. If you dont stipulate a defined value here, no buptim metainformation is written. version => INTEGER, vern => INTEGER, edmins => INTEGER, nofpages => INTEGER, nofwords => INTEGER, nofchars => INTEGER, nofcharsws => INTEGER, id => INTEGER, These are for stipulating the integer values of these various optional (and not terribly useful, for most purposes!) document metainformation items. The meanings of all of these are explained in the RTF spec. charset => STRING, This is for expressing, in the prolog, RTF codename for the character set being used in this document. The default is "ansi", and dont stipulate anything else (like "mac", "pc", or "pca") unless you know what youre doing. rtf_version => INTEGER, This is for expressing, in the prolog, what major version of RTF is being used in this document. The default is 1, and dont use anything else unless you really know what youre doing. $h->printf(format, ...items...); This is just short for $h->print(sprintf(format, ...items...) $h->printf(format, ...items...); In this case, format is assumed to contain already-escaped RTF code. The items in ...items... are escaped as necessary, and then interpolated. I.e., this is rather like: $h->print(sprintf format, map rtfesc($_), ...items...)) except that numeric items dont get escaped (and dont need to be). Example: $h->printf( {i "%s"} was found in %2.2f percent of matchespar, $word, 100 * $count / $total ); $h->number_pages(); $h->number_pages(...); This is just a handy wrapper for some code that turns on page numbering. If you call this method, you should call it right after you emit a prolog. The page numbering consists of just putting the page number at the top-right of each page. If you provide items in the list (...), then that is pre-pended to the page number. Example: $h->number_pages("Lexicon, p."); Or: $h->number_pages(bfs30f2, "page "); $trdecl = RTF::Writer::TableRowDecl->new( ...options... ) This constructs an object representing a declaration for a table row. You can have to use it in calls to $h->row($tabldecl,...), and can reuse it on subsequent calls. This object is for declaring the dimensions of table rows. The work that a declaration has to do, is best explained in this diagram of a bordered three-cell table (first cell containing "Foo ya!"), placed near a left margin (shown as the line of colons). The things in brackets are not on the page, but just for our reference: : [..w1...] : [......w2.......] : [...w3....] [.A..] [.B.] [.B.] : : +-------+---------------+---------+ : | Foo | Bar baz | Yee! | : | ya! | quuxi quuxo | | : | | quaqua. | | : +-------+---------------+---------+ : [.A..] [.B.] [.B.] [..r1........] [.....r2.....................] [........r3............................] Here the horizontal dimensions of the three-celled table are expressed in terms of: A, the distance from the current left margin; B, the minimum distance between the content of the cells (or you can think of this as twice the internal left or right borders in each cell); and then EITHER [w1, w2, w3], expressing the width of each cell, OR [r1, r2, r3], expressing each cells right ends distance from the current left margin. All distances are, of course, in twips. Options to RTF::Writer::TableRowDecl->new( ...options... ) are: left_start => TWIPS, This declares the distance between the left margin, and the left end of the table. Default is 0. inbetween => TWIPS, This declares the distance labelled "B", above. Default is 120, which is 6 points, 1/12th-inch, about 2mm. widths => [TWIPS, TWIPS, TWIPS, ... ], This expresses the widths of each of the cells in this row, starting from the leftmost. reaches => [TWIPS, TWIPS, TWIPS, ... ], This expresses the rightmost extreme of each of the cells in this row. align => alignmentspecs, This is explained in detail in the section "Cell Alignment Syntax", below. borders => borderspecs, This is explained in detail in the section "Cell Border Syntax", below. $h->paragraph(...); This makes the items in the list (...) into a paragraph. Basically just a wrapper for $h->print([ {par, ..., pard}, ]) $h->row($trdecl, ...items...); This emits a table row, with dimensions as stipulated by the $trdecl object, and with row content from the items given. You must provide a value for $trdecl, or a fatal error results. If you provide fewer items than $trdecl declares cells, then you get empty cells to fill out the row. If you provide more items than $trdecl declares cells, then the width of the last declared row is used in figuring the width of the additional cells for this row. Example: my $decl = RTF::Writer::TableRowDecl->new(widths => [1500,1900]); $h->row($decl, "Stuff", "Hmmm"); $h->row($decl, [ul, Foo], Bar, bullet); $h->row($decl, "Hooboy."); This creates a table resembing: +-------------+-------------------+ | Stuff | Hmm | +-------------+-------------------+-------------------+ | _Foo_ | Bar | * | +-------------+-------------------+-------------------+ | "Hooboy." | | +-------------+-------------------+ Note that you MUST NOT use par commands in any items you emit in row cells! The $h->row(...) method is a wrapper for producing elementary tables in RTF, with the minimum of parameters; the myriad other options that tables can have (for example, changing borders) are not supported. If you really need to generate tables fancier than what $h->row(...) can produce, start off reading the RTF spec, reading the source for row() (and the RTF::Writer::TableRowDecl class), and progress from there. Note that MSWord has been known to crash when given malformed RTF table code. $h->table($trdecl, [...row1 items...], [...row2 items...], ... ); $h->table([...row1 items...], [...row2 items...], ... ); This is a wrapper around $h->row. It takes a list of arrayrefs, which are fed to calls to h->row($tr_decl, @$each_arrayref). You should provide a $trdecl, but if you dont, then one is crudely guessed at, based on the maximum number of columns in all rows. $h->image( image_parameters ) This returns a scalar-reference to RTF-code representing the given image with given parameters. For example: $h->paragraph( "See here: ", $h->image( filename => "foo.png", ), ); The legal options are explained below: filename => FILENAME, This should be the path to a readable filename. You have to specify this. If you dont specify this, or if the value isnt a readable file, then a fatal error results. Currently, only JPEGs and PNGs are allowed; specifying any other kind of file causes a fatal error. (The filename option above is required, but the following options are all generally optional -- altho some RTF processors may be finicky if you set some of the following but not others, for no apparent reason. When in doubt, test.) wgoal => TWIPS, The desired width of the image hgoal => TWIPS, The desired height of the image scalex => PERCENT, scaley => PERCENT, Respectively, the horizontal (X) or vertical (Y) scaling value. The argument is an integer representing a percentage. (The default is 100 percent) cropt => TWIPS, cropb => TWIPS, cropl => TWIPS, cropr => TWIPS, These specify the top, bottom, left, and right cropping values. A positive value crops toward the center of the image. A negative value crops away from the center, adding a padding space around the image. (The default is to do neither, as youd get from a cropping value of 0.) picspecs => SCALARVALUE, This overrides generation of the normal image values based the image and the above parameters, and instead uses whatever value you pass a reference to. You normally shouldnt need to use this. $h->image_paragraph( image_parameters ); This take the same options as $h->image(...), but has three differences: First, it is a shortcut for this: $h->paragraph( qc, $h->image( ...params...), ); Secondly, whereas $h->image(...) returns the image data (as an RTF scalarref), $h->image_paragraph(...) doesnt return much of anything. Thirdly, $h->image_paragraph(...) is often much more memory-efficient, since it can write the image data to a file as its RTF-ified, instead of building it all up in memory. $h->close(); This completes writing to the stream denoted by the object in $h; this generally (assuming youd called $h->prolog) involves just writing a final close-brace to $h, and then closing whatever filehandle or file $h writes to (unless were writing to a string, in which case we just discard $hs reference to it). After you call $h->close, you should not call any other methods with $h! Note that you dont have to explicitly call $h->close -- when an unclosed RTF::Writer object goes out of scope (or, more precisely speaking, when if its refcount hits zero), then something equivalent to calling $h->close is done automatically for you..

Requirements:	No special requirements
Platforms:	Linux
Keyword:	Document,  Epoch,  Font Table,  In This,  Integer,  Items,  Number,  Prolog,  Reference To,  Rtf,  String,  Text To,  Twips,  Value,  Value Of,  You Dont
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