PostScript::MailLabels modules - create postscript for printing on mailing label stock =========================================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS ----------------- 1. Description 2. Availability 3. Prerequisites 4. Installation 5. Running Tests 6. Demonstration scripts 7. Bugs 8. Change History 9. Copyright 10. Author Information 1. DESCRIPTION -------------- This is a pair of modules for calibrating, testing, and printing mailing labels on standard label stock. It may also be used for other tasks that print standard fields onto a regular grid. The modules are : PostScript::MailLabels PostScript::MailLabels::BasicData BasicData is called by MailLabels and is not meant to be called by anyone else. MailLabels has three main outputs, in postscript(tm). 1. A calibration sheet for measuring the print borders and centering of your printer 2. A test sheet showing where the edges of the labels should be. This is used to make the final adjustments to the calibration 3. The address labels themselves 2. AVAILABILITY --------------- The newest version (which should be considered a beta version) is available through my home page: http://www.ajackson.org/software/maillabels Feel free to try it out. The current (non-beta) version of this module is available from your nearest CPAN site. The two will frequently be the same. 3. PREREQUISITES ---------------- Perl 5.005_03 is where I developed this. It may work with earlier versions, but I haven't tried it. I'm not too sophisticated, so I'd be a little surprised if I used anything not in 5.003 for example. 4. INSTALLATION --------------- To install, just type perl Makefile.PL make make test make install For help with Makefile.PL, try perldoc ExtUtils::MakeMaker If you wish to install in a non-standard place, use perl Makefile.PL LIB=~/lib PREFIX=~ 5. RUNNING TESTS ---------------- Three PostScript(tm) files will be created by the tests. You should view these with ghostview, ghostscript, or your favorite viewer. Or print them. I can't imagine the tests failing, unless you were missing some key part of perl, but hey, things happen. If it fails, email me. Try running make test TEST_VERBOSE=1 and send me the results. 6. DEMONSTRATION SCRIPTS ------------------------ In the /demo directory are some scripts that show what it can do. Hope they make the documentation clearer. Current demos include : demo/diskette.pl - generate labels for 3.5 inch diskettes demo/portuguese.pl - generate mailing labels in Portuguese on A4 paper demo/std_business.pl - use the standard USPS field designations for labels demo/print_addrs - simple script to make labels for Christmas Cards. demo/testlabels.pl - same as the example in the pod. Shows everything it can do. Right now I'm using addressbook from http://home.pages.de/~clemens, which is a reasonable ASCII database and Tcl/Tk front-end for editing the database. Or look at these addresses... at http://www.red.roses.de/~clemens/addressbook/ or http://addressbook.home.pages.de/ 7. BUGS ------- None that I know of - when you find one, let me know. If you do report it, please include : - version of perl - version of MailLabel - Operating System and version - description of problem - a *short* piece of code that demonstrates the problem 8. CHANGE HISTORY ----------------- Revision history for Perl extension PostScript::MailLabels. 2.02 Fri Jan 12 22:07:12 CST 2001 Added y_gap tp Avery(tm) labels Updated calibration plot in BasicData to arbitrary paper size Minor repairs to test routine 2.00 Mon Jan 1 14:50:37 CST 2001 Major revision. Added all of the component and label definition stuff. Thanks to "Andrew Smith" for suggesting additional fields and inspiring the generalization. Thanks to Nuno Faria for assisting with the "Europeanization" of the code - it now works for Portuguese, and hopefully for other alphabets as well. Added pagesize so that various paper sizes are actually handled correctly. Minor bug fixes to PostScript::MailLabels::BasicData, now at version 1.01. 1.01 Fri Dec 29 10:00:07 CST 2000 - bug fix version. - added parameter checking and also lowercase parameters to reduce errors. - fixed PostScript code for boxes to work with newer ghostscript interpreters - added new URL's for addressbook homepage. 1.00 Wed Nov 10 21:32:53 1999 - original version; created by h2xs 1.19 9. COPYRIGHT ------------ Copyright (c) 1999 Alan Jackson. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. 10. AUTHOR INFORMATION --------------------- Alan Jackson alanj@ajackson.org http://www.ajackson/org/