PDF is the Portable Document
Format developed by Adobe. It's an open standard (watch out, that's a 9MB link to the spec),
implemented by Adobe in their Acrobat series of software, but implementable and
extensible by anybody who's got the time, inclination, and knack. One trick
that's got a lot of potential is using PHP to dynamically generate PDF files and
serve them via the Web.
PHP can do a lot for your Web operation.
You can generate nice-looking printable
receipts, invoices, and brochures.
Disc-Cover has a test site that looks up info about a CD automatically
and then generates a PDF label for
the CD box that you can print, cut
out, and use. And there are literally
one billion other possible uses for
dynamically generated PDFs.
You have a variety of PDF-generation
options. The standard, classic way
of doing it is with PDFlib. Because it's so widely used and well-integrated into
PHP, that's the library I'll go over
today. But it's by no means the only
way of doing things. PDFlib is source-available,
but not free. The license
specifies that PDFlib can be used
and redistributed without charge for
non-commercial projects, but commercial
use starts at $500.
ClibPDF
is an alternative package with a similar
license. But there are a number of
completely free options. These include
R&OS, FPDF, Panda, and YaPs. The choice is yours. (I haven't had a chance to test these
free packages very thoroughly. If
you have had negative or positive
experiences with them, please do let
me know.)
[Document
Source] [Courtesy
Web Monkey]
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