PDF with Arabic
Tobin Harris
Anyone know what my best choice of library is for generating multilingual
PDFs in Ruby. The PDFs will need to output English, Arabic, Dutch and Danish
text.
Thanks
Tobin
Andreas Schwarz
I don't know any of the ruby PDF libraries, but I've been using Latex to
generate PDF from Ruby with good results.
Tobin Harris
Sounds like an interesting approach. Would you be able to give me some
pointers as to the libraries you use. If you wouldn't mind, I have a couple
of questions:
- Is there a lib for Ruby that is considered best for integrating with
Latex?
- Could the libs be used on a shared server, without sysadmin intervention?
- What's the best way for me to start playing with LaTex/Ruby to see if it
will work?
Much appreciated
Tobin
"Andreas Schwarz" <use...@andreas-s.net> wrote in message
news:436745ac$0$21942$9b4e...@newsread2.arcor-online.net...
Austin Ziegler
Long term, this will be PDF::Writer. Right now, we've just *barely*
gotten Japanese working thanks to the diligence of Noritsugu Nakamura.
I have a number of font issues to figure out, but I expect sometime
early next year we will have full multilingual PDF.
-austin
--
Austin Ziegler * halos...@gmail.com
* Alternate: aus...@halostatue.ca
Andreas S.
> Hi Andreas
>
> Sounds like an interesting approach. Would you be able to give me some
> pointers as to the libraries you use. If you wouldn't mind, I have a couple
> of questions:
>
> - Is there a lib for Ruby that is considered best for integrating with
> Latex?
> - Could the libs be used on a shared server, without sysadmin intervention?
> - What's the best way for me to start playing with LaTex/Ruby to see if it
> will work?
Hi,
you don't need a library. Just create a Latex template file with
embedded ruby (ERb), compile it to a latex file and run "pdflatex
yourfile.tex". You need a full latex installation on the server, though.
On a shared web server I wouldn't count on that.
Andreas
Andreas S.
> On 11/1/05, Tobin Harris <tobin@_do_not_spam_tobinharris.com> wrote:
>
>>Hi there,
>>
>>Anyone know what my best choice of library is for generating multilingual
>>PDFs in Ruby. The PDFs will need to output English, Arabic, Dutch and Danish
>>text.
>
>
> Long term, this will be PDF::Writer. Right now, we've just *barely*
> gotten Japanese working thanks to the diligence of Noritsugu Nakamura.
>
> I have a number of font issues to figure out, but I expect sometime
> early next year we will have full multilingual PDF.
Including support for right-to-left text?
Austin Ziegler
> Including support for right-to-left text?
That's the intent. I believe that it's pretty easy to do that part
already, although I don't have any code that directly enables it in
the PDF, because the font issues (the *main* problem) aren't yet
resolved.
Nura...@aol.com
You can use ArabTex, which is a Latex-based system, to typeset Arabic. This
is
a link to a description of it:
_http://home.uchicago.edu/~narusso/comp/arabic/_
(http://home.uchicago.edu/~narusso/comp/arabic/)
Use it like Andreas recommended to use Latex from Ruby and generate PDFs.
Latex has built-in ways to cut off words at the end of lines and spacings
between question
marks etc. that are special for each language. Also, some languages use
special characters and accents. I think Danish has circles on top of 'a' and
'A'.
There are special ways for Latex to produce these, and Latex will
automatically
generate (some) fonts of different type and size to do that.
You can find reference on that online in the "Not so short guide to
Latex2\epsilon":
_http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf_
(http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf)
which is a self contained, but not so short introduction and reference.
Best regards,
Axel