[TriLUG] Data reporting tools

Ed Hill ed at eh3.com
Thu Nov 7 10:56:27 EST 2002


On Thu, 2002-11-07 at 08:04, Andrew Perrin wrote:
> What do y'all use for data reporting tools? I'm taking over an editorial
> position at a sociology journal we publish here, and one of the things I
> plan on doing is automating the peer- and book-review processes (using all
> open source, of course).  We'll be using PostgreSQL as the backend and a
> perl/cgi frontend, but there's still a fair amount of printing to be done,
> e.g., to send request letters to reviewers, acceptances, rejections, etc.,
> etc.
> 
> In the past I've written scripts to write data to LaTeX format, then
> latex, dvips, lpr.  But LaTeX is great for some documents (e.g.,
> letters) and lousy for others (e.g., tables of undetermined length, data
> cards, etc.).  What other tools are available for this kind of work?


Hi Andrew,

I'd be happy just to hear that another journal is capable of handling
LaTeX for manuscripts.  I recently submitted an MS to --[name of the
guilty withheld]-- and on the galley prints they severely botched the
mathematical markup.  About 50% of the equations were dead wrong
(incorrect, missing, and/or improperly located symbols) and they all
looked *quite* ugly in whatever package (Quark, PageMaker, ...?) had
been used to do the page layout.  Its a shame what many journals pass
off as markup given that Knuth's TeX output is vastly superior and has
been available for, what, *decades*?

Well, enough ranting...

Have you considered HTML for some of your document needs?  Yes, I know
its not intended for hard-copy but it does handle tables much better
than LaTeX and you could email it directly to many (nearly all?) of the
authors for free.  Just imagine, your journal could be progressive and
take a big step towards the environmentally friendly paperless world.

Another and perhaps better option is PDF.  Have you played with PHP? 
PHP can programmatically generate PDF output of passable to excellent
quality (depending on the skill of the programmer) that can then be
either served up electronically or printed and sent as snail-mail.  The
output is resolution independent and should look good on any printer. 
There are a number of books that cover PHP and PostgresSQL integration
and some come with code examples demonstrating PDF generation.  I have
one at home and can send you the reference this evening if you want.

I think your open-source approach is cool and I wish you well with your
journal efforts!!!

Ed

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD 
Post-Doctoral Researcher   |  Email:  ed at eh3.com,  ehill at mines.edu
Division of ESE            |  URLs:   http://www.eh3.com
Colorado School of Mines   |    http://cesep.mines.edu/people/edhill.php
Golden, CO  80401          |  Phones:  303-384-2094, 303-273-3483
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