Help needed in migrating from Windows

From: Dave (daveandniki_at_ntlworld.com)
Date: 06/05/05 

Date: Sun, 05 Jun 2005 14:52:38 GMT

The code snippet below prints out a bilingual dictionary of mine into
MSWord. The dictionary entries are in an XML file that I edit with VIM. The
Perl script parses the file, processes and sorts the data and puts it in a
data structure of paragraphs composed of pieces of text with formatting
instructions (I may add more options in the future). I can also print out
plain text or html with similar routines. The Word output has the advantage
of allowing me to add page numbers and insert an introduction etc easily.

I would like to migrate this to Linux (I have XP / SuSE 9.1 dual boot on my
notebook) but am unsure of which program to replace Word with. OOo does not
seem to automate as easily. I don't know which line to go down: TeX, PDF, a
different Word processor? It would be easy to output XML and then use a
'stylesheet' to get this to output PDF for instance if there was a program
around to do this step. Any thoughts on what tools I should be considering?

Thanks,

Dave

sub word_print {
 use Win32::OLE;
 Win32::OLE->Option(CP => Win32::OLE::CP_UTF8());
 my $word = CreateObject Win32::OLE 'Word.Application' or die $!;
 $word->{'Visible'} = 1;
 my $document = $word->Documents->Add;
 my $selection = $word->Selection;
 $selection->Font->{Name} = "Gentium";
 my $i = 0;
 foreach my $para (@foutput) {
  $i++; last if $i == 50; # just a few for debugging
  foreach (@{$para}) {
    if (@{$_}[1] eq "") {
     $selection->TypeText(@{$_}[0]);
    }
    elsif (@{$_}[1] eq "b") {
     $selection->Font->{Bold} = 1;
     $selection->TypeText(@{$_}[0]);
     $selection->Font->{Bold} = 0;
    }
    elsif (@{$_}[1] eq "i") {
     $selection->Font->{Italic} = 1;
     $selection->TypeText(@{$_}[0]);
     $selection->Font->{Italic} = 0;
    }
    elsif (@{$_}[1] eq "s") {
     $selection->Font->{Superscript} = 1;
     $selection->TypeText(@{$_}[0]);
     $selection->Font->{Superscript} = 0;
    }
    else {
     die "Unknown formatting: " . @{$_}[1];
    }
   }
   $selection -> TypeParagraph;
  }
  $document->SaveAs("$outfile") or die "Could not save: " .
Win32::OLE->LastError() . "\n";
  $word->Close;
}

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