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PostScript::MailLabels modules - create postscript for printing on mailing label stock
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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.

I now use J-Pilot and my Palm for my address book, and so I have code
on my webpage (ajackson.org) to handle reading from the J-pilot database
and generating address labels.

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.

2.32 Tue Oct 2 19:26:09 CDT 2012
Update from Lee Hart to fix dawn of time bug of not honoring metric units!

2.30 Mon Nov 17 20:36:36 CST 2008
Apply patch from brian d foy to add
dymo labels

2.27 Mon Oct 20 20:09:09 CDT 2008
Patch had an error - repired.
Add META.yml

2.26 Sun Oct 19 16:22:56 CDT 2008
Add Userdefined as an option for papersize at request of Jim Albert
Apply patch from brian d. foy for Avery 8923 labels, plus a documentation adjustment

2.25 Tue Jul 4 14:37:34 CDT 2006
Escape open and close parens in postscript code at request of Thomas
Byström

2.24 Wed Jan 4 19:57:57 CST 2006
Patch from Robert Harris to make output 7-bit clean

2.23 Tue Nov 29 20:55:38 CST 2005
Added Avery 5526 labels per request of Wallace Winfrey

2.22 Sat Nov 26 14:25:39 CST 2005
an small patch correcting the encoding for all fonts, with this patch you
can use different fonts with IsoLatin encoding. Supplied by Ing. Juan
Manuel Calvo, Director del Centro de Cómputos, Universidad del CEMA

2.21 Sat Aug 13 17:43:36 CDT 2005
Minor repairs to fix what patches broke (ISOLatin1Encoding), update docs
and examples.

2.20 Sat Aug 13 16:39:54 CDT 2005
Applied patches from Jonathan Kamens
1) Add support for No. 9 and No. 6 3/4 envelopes.

2) Add 5160 to the list of Avery product codes for the layout code 5160
(since 5160 is the product code that appeared on the box of labels that
I bought).

3) Add a new "orientation" setup option which can be set to "portrait"
or "landscape", with "portrait" being the default.

4) Modify the generated PostScript code so that if we're in landscape
mode, we rotate and translate appropriately.

5) Wrap the generated PostScript code in "gsave ... grestore" so that
the translation and rotation is protected (this way, e.g., you can
have both a calibration page and a label test page in the same
PostScript file without over-rotating and over-translating).

6) Don't hard-code the list of valid paper sizes in MailLabels.pm;
instead, get it from BasicData.pm.

7) To support the new landscape stuff, add a new parameter to the
papersize() function, "logical", to indicate whether the caller
wants the physical page size or the logical one. The logical page
size has the width and height flipped when in landscape mode.
Modify calls to papersize() when appropriate to use the logical
rather than physical page size.

8) Fix a typo in a comment.

2.11 Sat Nov 13 14:42:37 CST 2004
Put in a trap to catch empty fields and set them to blank with a
warning (Joe Zacky found this one). Also update docs to explain the
barcode stuff, since if you look closely, it can be confusing.

2.10 Sun Aug 29 14:00:53 CDT 2004
Added parameters for 5167 Avery(tm) stock - thanks to Daniel J McDonald
for supplying the parameters.

Also added many new Avery (tm) parameters. Thanks to Summer Misherghi
who pointed me to http://www.worldlabel.com/Pages/pageaverylabels.htm

Added new parameter set 'freetype', to allow the user to place a text
string anywhere they want. Particular use is for numbering the pages.

Code now escapes special PostScript characters (){}[]<>/% in the
input so that they will print properly and not crash the PS interpreter.

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" <asmith at wpequity.com> 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
[email protected]
http://www.ajackson/org/