Groff¶ ↑

Groff is another ruby pdf generator that doesn’t reinvent the wheel.

It use the always present groff command (on all macs and *nix), and ps2pdf from ghostscript package.

If you load it within rails, you will get a TemplateEngine for free

Some resources to get you started:

• GitHub Wiki

• GitHub Repo

• Conferencia Rails Lighting Talks (WMV)

The recommended way is that you get the gem:

# add GitHub to your local list of gem sources:
gem sources -a http://gems.github.com/

# install the gem:
gem install guillermo-groff

Just add a simple require to the end of “config/environment.rb”:

gem 'guillermo-groff'
require 'groff'

That’s it. Remember to install the gem on all machines that you are deploying to.

Create a view named index.pdf.groff with these content

.AUTHOR    "<%= author = %x(who am i).split(" ").first.capitalize %>"
.DOCTYPE    LETTER
.PRINTSTYLE TYPESET
.START
.DATE
<%= Time.now.strftime "%A, %d %b %Y %H:%M" %>
.TO
User of Groff
.FROM
Guillermo Álvarez
guillermo@cientifico.net
.GREETING
Hi
Enjoy using groff
.CLOSING
Bye

Authors

Guillermo Álvarez <guillermo@cientifico.net>

Thanks

Willpaginate as I used as scaffold for the template engine and gem