generating WordProcessingML with Perl

[ccc31807]

My job is to produce reports. Reports must have some kind of format.
Mostly, I usually produce reports in ASCII format, such as txt, csv,
or xml (including xhtml). Occasionally, my customers will specify a
format that I don't often use, such as PDF or Microsoft Word.

When this happens with Word, I have produced handwritten rtf,
generated rtf using a CPAN module (that I can't remember the name of
now) or (in the past a CPAN) doc module that produced a bin file. I
now have a requirement to produce a Word document (actually thousands
of them) for Word 2007 using data from a database.

After fiddling around as I normally do looking at the usual suspects,
I got around to OOXML, and specifically WordProcessingML. I confess
that this impresses me and surprises me. It's pretty good -- I can
generate an ASCII text file, interpolate my variables, and have it
open natively in Word. Cool.

Before writing the app, I thought I would troll here and see if anyone
has any real experience using WordProcessingML, and if so, their
conclusions, especially including traps, snares, and pitfalls.

Thanks, CC.

 

[sln]

My job is to produce reports. Reports must have some kind of format.
Mostly, I usually produce reports in ASCII format, such as txt, csv,
or xml (including xhtml). Occasionally, my customers will specify a
format that I don't often use, such as PDF or Microsoft Word.

When this happens with Word, I have produced handwritten rtf,
generated rtf using a CPAN module (that I can't remember the name of
now) or (in the past a CPAN) doc module that produced a bin file. I
now have a requirement to produce a Word document (actually thousands
of them) for Word 2007 using data from a database.

After fiddling around as I normally do looking at the usual suspects,
I got around to OOXML, and specifically WordProcessingML. I confess
that this impresses me and surprises me. It's pretty good -- I can
generate an ASCII text file, interpolate my variables, and have it
open natively in Word. Cool.

Before writing the app, I thought I would troll here and see if anyone
has any real experience using WordProcessingML, and if so, their
conclusions, especially including traps, snares, and pitfalls.

Thanks, CC.

Your 'job' is to produce reports. So you thought you would troll here
for what, before you actually read anything about it?

I have no idea what you are talking about.

-sln