Using lists in prawn

Question

Im using prawn to create pdfs that contain much data in table format and some lists. The problem with the lists is that Im just using text as lists because there is no semantic

Answer 1

Just did this for a customer. For everybody who wants to render preformatted html containing ul / ol lists:

def render_html_text(text, pdf)
  #render text (indented if inside ul)
  indent = 0 #current indentation (absolute, e.g. n*indent_delta for level n)
  indent_delta = 10 #indentation step per list level
  states = [] #whether we have an ol or ul at level n
  indices = [] #remembers at which index the ol list at level n, currently is

  #while there is another list tag do
  #  => starting position of list tag is at i
  #  render everything that comes before the tag
  #  cut everything we have rendered from the whole text
  #end
  while (i = text.index /<\/?[ou]l>/) != nil do
    part = text[0..i-1]
    if indent == 0 #we're not in a list, but at the top level
      pdf.text part, :inline_format => true
    else
      pdf.indent indent do
        #render all the lis
        part.gsub(/<\/li>/, '').split('
').each do |item|
          next if item.blank? #split may return some ugly start and end blanks

          item_text = if states.last == :ul
                        "• #{item}"
                      else # :ol
                        indices[indices.length-1] = indices.last + 1
                        "#{indices.last}. #{item}"
                      end

          pdf.text item_text, :inline_format => true
        end
      end
    end

    is_closing = text[i+1] == '/' #closing tag?
    if is_closing
      indent -= indent_delta
      i += '