From walter at frii.com Thu Dec 28 17:00:52 2000 From: walter at frii.com (Walter Pienciak) Date: Wed Aug 4 23:58:26 2004 Subject: [boulder.pm] another outing of some kind? Message-ID: Well, the holiday season is in full stride, and on top of that I just finished a conference and an *actual vacation*. I obviously have some ingrained Calvinistic tendencies from somewhere, because I feel a strong urge to counteract all the fleshly indulgences I have enjoyed recently. Anyone interested in an after-work or weekend hike? I'm thinking maybe something around the south end of the Mesa Trail, which has a moderate grade and some excellent views. For those who haven't attended one of these things yet, here are a few salient points: 1. I haven't seen a buffed uberfitness type yet. NO high-altitude training or specific aerobic capacities required ;^) Just a bunch of people out walking. 2. Conversation topics tend to be the same Perl/geek wandering-thread type of conversation you'd expect elsewhere. 3. Sekrit 3733t stuph is ALWAYS imparted. Walter Ob-Perl: Lincoln Stein has a new book just out on network programming in Perl -- along the lines of the Stevens book apparently. It is barely possible, based on an e-mail I got from its editor, that I'll get one to review. I'll keep you posted. From boulder-pm at jim-baker.com Thu Dec 28 18:03:07 2000 From: boulder-pm at jim-baker.com (Jim Baker) Date: Wed Aug 4 23:58:26 2004 Subject: [boulder.pm] another outing of some kind? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm interested in a Mesa trail hike. It's a different approach to Perl mongering than the one taken in NYC, that's for certain. (I just moved here from there.) You see, in NY.pm, we debate the merits of the Peculier Pub (500 beers) vs d.b.a. (75 single malts). We still managed to discuss Perl, at least when Schwern showed up. So I guess we did the standard Perl/geek stuff. Anytime during the week works really for me. Which means late afternoon, around 4 PM, for this season. Or you can join me at sunrise ;) - Jim -----Original Message----- From: owner-boulder-pm-list@pm.org [mailto:owner-boulder-pm-list@pm.org]On Behalf Of Walter Pienciak Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2000 4:01 PM To: boulder-pm-list@happyfunball.pm.org Subject: [boulder.pm] another outing of some kind? Well, the holiday season is in full stride, and on top of that I just finished a conference and an *actual vacation*. I obviously have some ingrained Calvinistic tendencies from somewhere, because I feel a strong urge to counteract all the fleshly indulgences I have enjoyed recently. Anyone interested in an after-work or weekend hike? I'm thinking maybe something around the south end of the Mesa Trail, which has a moderate grade and some excellent views. For those who haven't attended one of these things yet, here are a few salient points: 1. I haven't seen a buffed uberfitness type yet. NO high-altitude training or specific aerobic capacities required ;^) Just a bunch of people out walking. 2. Conversation topics tend to be the same Perl/geek wandering-thread type of conversation you'd expect elsewhere. 3. Sekrit 3733t stuph is ALWAYS imparted. Walter Ob-Perl: Lincoln Stein has a new book just out on network programming in Perl -- along the lines of the Stevens book apparently. It is barely possible, based on an e-mail I got from its editor, that I'll get one to review. I'll keep you posted. From longmore at fsl.noaa.gov Fri Dec 29 22:56:11 2000 From: longmore at fsl.noaa.gov (Scott Longmore) Date: Wed Aug 4 23:58:26 2004 Subject: [boulder.pm] Font width/length for CGI scripts using CSS References: Message-ID: <3A4D6AEB.D0C94A1E@fsl.noaa.gov> Hey gang, Havent posted for a while...guess I'm just a lowly lurker Really starting to dive into Perl CGI and now CSS. Im actually looking for a perl module that will give the height and width of characters for a particular font..say New Times Roman 12pnt, along with other attributes of the font similar to XFontStructure in the X11 circles...do see on CPAN there there is such a module that recovers those attributes X11::XFontStruct, but also see a couple of other font modules..such as Postscript::FontMetrics and Font::AFM. Anyone had any experience with these? Also saw some font metrics modules for some fonts..I think those supported by web browsers, Helv, Times and Courier, that come with libwww...but Im not absolutley sure those modules come with libwww in the latest version...anybody know about this? and what these modules exactly did? I essentially need to be able to read in a text file...and throw the text into a series of fixed sized tables. By calculating the length in pixels of the text knowing the width of each charcters for a particular font, I can determine when to insert carriage returns or html line breaks and to carry over into the next table column. Any recommendations or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.... Cheers Scott From nagler at bivio.com Fri Dec 29 23:12:36 2000 From: nagler at bivio.com (Rob Nagler) Date: Wed Aug 4 23:58:26 2004 Subject: [boulder.pm] Font width/length for CGI scripts using CSS References: <3A4D6AEB.D0C94A1E@fsl.noaa.gov> Message-ID: <3A4D6EC4.371286E8@bivio.com> > I essentially need to be able to read in a text file...and throw the > text into a series of fixed sized tables. By calculating the length > in pixels of the text knowing the width of each charcters for a > particular font, I can determine when to insert carriage returns > or html line breaks and to carry over into the next table column. If you find out, let us know. I don't believe this information is available. Indeed, you have no guarantee the browser will render in a particular font. HTML is supposed to be declarative. The idea is you put the text in a table cell and the browser does the wrapping (or not) depending on your cell width. If you specify all the column widths and the table width, it should do what you are expecting it to do. Rob From rise at frii.com Sat Dec 30 01:34:54 2000 From: rise at frii.com (Jonathan Conway) Date: Wed Aug 4 23:58:26 2004 Subject: [boulder.pm] another outing of some kind? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 28 Dec 2000, Walter Pienciak wrote: > Anyone interested in an after-work or weekend hike? I'm thinking > maybe something around the south end of the Mesa Trail, which > has a moderate grade and some excellent views. Sounds good to me. That area tends to dry out before most of the Flatirons trails so we shouldn't have to deal with too much muck. Any of the above works as far as timing (as does during the day now that I'm working from home and have more flexibility in scheduling). > 1. I haven't seen a buffed uberfitness type yet. NO high-altitude > training or specific aerobic capacities required ;^) Just a bunch > of people out walking. I can certainly corroborate this. Pacing is somewhere between slow and optional (possibly because you have to keep your breath for the conversation). > 2. Conversation topics tend to be the same Perl/geek wandering-thread > type of conversation you'd expect elsewhere. Sigh, so much for the aura of sanctity surrounding these events. > 3. Sekrit 3733t stuph is ALWAYS imparted. Ooh, nice recovery. :0 I seem to remember something about the undocumented -DWIM command line argument that'll clean up most logic errors and such. I'd have never found it on my own. > Ob-Perl: Lincoln Stein has a new book just out on network programming > in Perl -- along the lines of the Stevens book apparently. It is barely > possible, based on an e-mail I got from its editor, that I'll get one to > review. I'll keep you posted. Cool. I've been looking forward to this book for a while, but I haven't seen any reviews of it. Jonathan From rise at frii.com Sat Dec 30 01:55:32 2000 From: rise at frii.com (Jonathan Conway) Date: Wed Aug 4 23:58:26 2004 Subject: [boulder.pm] Font width/length for CGI scripts using CSS In-Reply-To: <3A4D6EC4.371286E8@bivio.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, Rob Nagler wrote: > > I essentially need to be able to read in a text file...and throw the > > text into a series of fixed sized tables. By calculating the length > > in pixels of the text knowing the width of each charcters for a > > particular font, I can determine when to insert carriage returns > > or html line breaks and to carry over into the next table column. > > If you find out, let us know. I don't believe this information is > available. Indeed, you have no guarantee the browser will render > in a particular font. If you absolutely have to do this you're not going to be able to do it in HTML. As Rob points out there are no guarantees on the rendering end and if you're using lynx, w3m, or the emacs w3 mode in a text term they'll probably see only the terminal font. What you're going to have to do is put everything in images, use Java to render the text, or produce a PDF of the text with the proper format. The first two are awful in terms of bandwidth and maintenance (as well as compatibility). The PDF options isn't particularly great on either front but may be your best bet (if only because then someone can use pdftotext or pdftohtml to extract the text). If you can tell us why you need to do this someone may be able to come up with a better solution for your particular problem domain. Jonathan Conway From longmore at fsl.noaa.gov Sat Dec 30 12:45:44 2000 From: longmore at fsl.noaa.gov (Scott Longmore) Date: Wed Aug 4 23:58:27 2004 Subject: [boulder.pm] Font width/length for CGI scripts using CSS References: Message-ID: <3A4E2D58.CB70446@fsl.noaa.gov> Jonathan Conway wrote: > On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, Rob Nagler wrote: > > > > I essentially need to be able to read in a text file...and throw the > > > text into a series of fixed sized tables. By calculating the length > > > in pixels of the text knowing the width of each charcters for a > > > particular font, I can determine when to insert carriage returns > > > or html line breaks and to carry over into the next table column. > > > > If you find out, let us know. I don't believe this information is > > available. Indeed, you have no guarantee the browser will render > > in a particular font. > > If you absolutely have to do this you're not going to be able to do it in > HTML. As Rob points out there are no guarantees on the rendering end and > if you're using lynx, w3m, or the emacs w3 mode in a text term they'll > probably see only the terminal font. Not really worried about lynx w3m or emacs...as our customers will be accessing these documents via netscape or ie through T1 connections. > What you're going to have to do is > put everything in images, use Java to render the text, or produce a PDF of > the text with the proper format. The first two are awful in terms of > bandwidth and maintenance (as well as compatibility). The PDF options > isn't particularly great on either front but may be your best bet (if only > because then someone can use pdftotext or pdftohtml to extract the text). This is the way its currently being done now...were using framemaker manually to generate pdf files and postscript files. the postscript files are then converted to png files which are then put on the web page...ugly huh...the pdf file is a linked into the html files so customers can download and print it out. > If you can tell us why you need to do this someone may be able to come up > with a better solution for your particular problem domain. Essentially...Im trying to automate the generation of a newsletter that can go on the web in html and create a downloadable pdf file by having the newsletter writer, scientist..not computer inclined , write a text file...that I can slurp in and dump into a nicely standardized and formated html file...need to be able to use columns..as he is use to seeing journal format...also will need to be able to embed images here and there. Were trying to get rid of framemaker and all the different image/file conversions....esentilly smooth out the process. Maybe it would be better to dump the text and images to a semi large image file im thinking 800 h x 600 w ....problem with this is then generating the pdf file..... What do ya think.... Scott