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.