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PDF Writers?

Posted by Cliff on from the reports-are-a-PHBs-best-friend dept.

Saqib Ali asks: "I am looking for for some OpenSource PDF Writers/Creator. I found one, here. It can basically create PDFs out of common software Like OfficeSuite, Visio, Project or any other Windows Application that uses the Windows Printers. I know OpenOffice can also export to PDF. I am working on a project (fat client) where I need to dynamically create PDF reports from data stored in MySQL DB. I know I can use PHP to create PDFs, and also Apache's Cocoon (you can find an example document, here). Of course, I would like to investigate other OpenSource PDF writers as well. Do you know of any other PDF writers, that I can utilize or learn from by looking at the source-code?"

6 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. CUPS by benjamindees · · Score: 4, Informative

    CUPS has an option for a virtual PDF printer in Linux, called CUPS-PDF.
    I think it's included in RedHat 9.

    --
    "I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
  2. fpdf.org by Bonewalker · · Score: 4, Informative
    I have found this site useful. The entire class is in one php file. Just move it to your web server, then use some of the tutorials to get the hang of creating pdf's on the fly.

    http://www.fpdf.org

  3. OpenOffice by Drakon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Openoffice can not only write PDFs, it can also read data from a mySQL (or other ODBC/JDBC compliant) databases.
    I don't see any reason not to use it out of the box for such a purpose... or am I missing something?

    --
    Buttsex.
  4. PDF Converters by RedPhoenix · · Score: 4, Informative

    Some of these might be useful:

    Txt2pdf - http://www.sanface.com/txt2pdf.html
    html2pdf - http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/5247/
    HTMLDoc - http://www.easysw.com/htmldoc/pdf-o-matic.php
    Den ature - http://freshmeat.net/projects/denature/
    csv2pdf - http://freshmeat.net/projects/csv2pdf/
    ascii2pdf - http://freshmeat.net/projects/ascii2pdf/

    And a google directory reference: http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software /Word_Processors/PDF/Converters/

    Good luck!

    Red.

  5. ps2pdf by GiMP · · Score: 3, Informative

    Practically every Unix applications output postscript when issued a print command. If the software doesn't allow you to print to file, then print to the command "cat > file.ps" to save to file.ps.

    Then, run:
    ps2pdf -r600 file.ps file.pdf

    You can change the 600 to whatever resolution you wish.

    If you're grabbing this from a database, you can simply output in text and use ascii2ps to create a pdf file.

  6. XML - FO - PDF by Mulligan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My current favorite for PDF generation is to build an XML document programatically. This document has no layout information, so I use Saxon and an XSLT stylesheet to translate it to XSL Formatting Objects. From there, I use FOP to translate to PDF.

    The best part is that the XML document contains the content, while the XSLT stylesheet describes how to make a document out of it. If I need a screen version all I have to do is write another stylesheet to translate to HTML.