Month: November 2016

This is the fourth and final post in a series on creating PDFs using LibreOffice and Python. The first three parts are here:

• PDFs from Python, Part 1
• PDFs from Python, Part 2
• PDFs from Python, Part 3

They’re all a supplement to a talk I gave at PyOhio 2016.

This final post is here to point you to a working code example that you can download from my Bitbucket repository. It’s enough to get you started so you can experiment with your own goals in mind.

https://bitbucket.org/philip_semanchuk/pdfs_from_python

One thing I mention in the code that’s worth repeating here is that the code uses ElementTree to manipulate XML. It’s sufficient for this demo, and the fact that it’s part of the Python standard library means you can run the demo without installing any third party libraries. For real world (i.e. non-demo) usage, I recommend lxml as a more robust and helpful alternative to ElementTree.

A Curious Coincidence: Stinkin’ Badges

The title of my PyOhio talk was “We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ PDF Library: Build PDFs with Python the Lazy Way”. You know the “we don’t need no stinkin’ [whatever]” meme, don’t you? It’s from the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles. (You can find the clip on YouTube.) Did you know that Blazing Saddles is quoting another movie?

The night before I gave my talk, I walked from my AirBnB to a nearby bar and bottle shop. (It’s simply called “The Bottle Shop”. Ohioans are plain dealers, apparently). I settled in there, happy with a pint of stout. On the big screen they were playing an old black and white Western — The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

I didn’t realize until it happened on the screen that this movie is the inspiration for the “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges” quote, although no one ever actually says “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges”. The actual line is “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”

It’s pretty close to the line from B. Traven’s novel of the same name.

I didn’t have time in my talk to mention Blazing Saddles, the mysterious B. Traven, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Humphrey Bogart, The Bottle Shop, nor the stout. But I was amused by our brief coincidence in Columbus.

I just returned from Tunisia a couple of days ago.

In 2014 and 2015 I worked for Caktus Group to help develop an SMS-based voter registration system on behalf of the Libyan government (specifically the High National Election Commission, or HNEC). The open source version of this system is called Smart Elect.

For the last three weeks in Tunisia (which is next door to Libya and a whole lot safer), Caktus’ Tobias McNulty and I trained a dozen HNEC employees on how to use, develop, and maintain the system. We talked about Python, Django, open source culture, GitHub Flow, and, of course, the upcoming U.S. election.

On the eve of that election, I thought it appropriate to express gratitude for my opportunity to participate in the messy sausage-making that is democracy. Good luck to our new Libyan friends; I hope they get the opportunity to do the same in the very near future.