setting up a file hierarchy

[Jurgen Pletinckx]

Please help me do my homework :)


I've got a module which creates .docx files. Those are Microsoft's
latest Word format, as described in the OOXML standard.

OOXML is not too gruesome to work with, and I'm having a great time
stuffing my reports with figures and tables and whatnot.

However, one very smelly piece of code is the creation of a new
document. A .docx file is just a zip container with a handful of XML
documents (plus extra media, if applicable). For most of these, the
default content is fine. But what is the optimal way of generating
them?

I currently find myself doing a lot of "mkdir"s and "print OUT
<<EOF"s, but that's messy. I could set up a template folder (next to
the module?) and copy that around, but that feels awkward as well.

I set up the hierarchy in a folder, and package that up with
Archive::Zip, as it makes interactions with the files easier. I could
write directly into a zip file, but that doesn't really make a
difference to the problem.

So. Any prior art? How should one treat non-code dependencies?

(Note: I'm not bothered about deploying this stuff, this is for now
strictly internal. Although, there doesn't seem to be _anything_ for
OOXML on CPAN.
Opportunity!)


--
Jurgen Pletinckx



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