Trigger Function and Html Output

Hello,i find i must turn once again to the list for help, in what
is probably another silly request.
I have a view (made of 4 tables) and now find that users
need to have the view different based on some criteria from the
database. its. well. its rather icky to go into. but i can figure that 
part out myself.
The long and short of it is this, I would like the view to
return a html table. I understand that I can do this via a function
and a trigger on select, massage the data, and then construct
each line to simply be returned to the perl program. The only 
problem comes with, as far as i am aware, a trigger returns and
is processed on a 'per line' basis for a select, so how would i 
get the view's column titles output for the table header ?
I ideally want to make as much of the perl construction
of the table from the database, this includes the head of the table,
all and each row, and then of course closing the table 'off'. I know
this sounds like a strange way to do things, but i think this is the
best way to go. 
many thanksstefs