Text-Report

Wednesday, 04 July, 2007 23:17
------------------------------

Text::Report is a module that will allow you to create neatly
formatted, text based reports that contain any number of tables of
various dimensions replete with configurable & optional titles, column
headings, decorations, sorting, column alignment and more.

Output can be a formatted report suitable for formal presentation
and/or you can produce comma delimited data either by individual
tables or the entire report.

I've tried to keep the interface simple and flexible. There are three
components to configure.

The 'report' component includes the width of the report itself, the
way that the 'blocks' of data are ordered within the report (either
automatically or by explicit indexing) and the way that table titles
are printed for each 'block' or data set.

The 'block' component is manipulated by its name and can contain
either free-form string data, a decorative separator, or columnar data
as a table or footer. Columns in each block created can be
automatically sized or the size (width) and alignment can be defined
by the user either globally or per column.

The 'column' component is manipulated by the block name that contains
it and the column position in the table. Columns can be addressed
individually to tweak the alignment, width and the column header.

The output is currently available in formatted text or comma delimited
text. Plans are being made to add html and xml output as well.

I've also incorporated a feature that allows you to save the defined
report as a template (using Storable store() & retrieve()) for reuse.

More detailed information and the most current build can be found at
http://www.full-duplex.com/svcs04.html under "Perl Libraries",
"Text::Report".

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I would be interested in hearing about how you have used this module
or if you have any suggestions, comments (yes, even bad) or questions.

Polite correspondence will be given a higher response priority.


INSTALLATION

To install this module, run the following commands:

    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make test
    make install


SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION

After installing, you can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

    perldoc Text::Report

You can also look for information at:

    Search CPAN
        http://search.cpan.org/dist/Text-Report

    CPAN Request Tracker:
        http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Text-Report

    AnnoCPAN, annotated CPAN documentation:
        http://annocpan.org/dist/Text-Report

    CPAN Ratings:
        http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/Text-Report

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (C) 2007 David Huggins

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
