XML -> HTML -> PS -> PDF

davorg on 2002-07-10T10:40:46

I mentioned that I'd finished my slides for the Idiomatic Perl tutorial. Over the weekend I remembered that O'Reilly would probably like to have copies of them to print for attendees. Yesterday I emailed them to find out what I was supposed to be doing. It seems that I was supposed to get my slides to them by June 10th, but somehow I didn't get the messages. Oops.

So I had to have them ready last night. What I already had was an XML file and a combination of Perl and XSLT that converted it to HTML pages. To make it as easy as possible to print the slides I decided that I wanted to convert the HTML pages to one PDF file.

I found html2ps which seemed to do a good job of creating one postscript file from the HTML. And I already had ps2pdf installed. Then I realised that it would be even more helpful if I could get two landscape slides on one portrait page. I remembered that there was a postscript utility for doing this, but it took me a few minutes to remember that it was called psnup.

There then followed a rather frustrating half hour whilst I tried to work out why psnup wasn't changing my files at all. Eventually I found the answer in the psnup FAQ and got that stage working.

After that, ps2pdf worked first time and I ended up with a PDF file that I was very happy with.

Yes, of course I should have been using AxPoint. But it's been an enjoyable learning experience :)

Oh, and apparently there are already 59 people signed up to my tutorial. If you're going to be at OSCON and your Perl could use a little workout, then please come along.

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Nor me

acme on 2002-07-10T11:08:34

I didn't get the message either. Wouldn't it have been an idea to remind us about this deadline? Where should I send the slides to, anyway?

Re:Nor me

davorg on 2002-07-10T11:17:55

Well, I think it's only a big deal for the tutorials - as they need to print copies of the slides for the attendees.

But if you have'nt had any of those messages then you might not have registered as a speaker yet. Better get in touch with Vee pronto  :)

attendee count?

geoff on 2002-07-10T11:49:32

nifty figure to have already, the number of people signed up for your tutorial. I wonder if we can all get that (without bugging Vee too much  :)

Re:attendee count?

davorg on 2002-07-10T12:21:28

I just asked her nicely in an email. Let's not all do it at once tho' - she's probably a bit busy right now  :)

Re:attendee count?

gnat on 2002-07-10T15:31:20

She's insanely busy with last-minute changes to the OSCON schedule and the Mac OS Con registration about to start. Send me mail and I'll tell you how many are in your tutorial.

--Nat