If you're looking at PDFLib, make sure you use my PDFLib.pm OO wrapper, as it's much easier to use than the core pdflib_pl.pm shipped with pdflib.

However have you also considered using XSL FO? You could use a system() callout to create the PDF's, either to Apache's FOP, or to PassiveTeX, and the results are very nice, and XSL FO is reasonably easy to work with.

Finally another option is to use HTMLDoc which also produces really nice results.