I have a web based application that I built using Perl, that gives the users the ability to download quotes into a PDF. Originally I had a link the user would push to get a detailed quote page as HTML, but then the users always want more.

So after trying to manually convert the HTML to PDF I went for the easy route, I used htmldoc which gets a web page and converts it to Postscript, then I use Ghostscript (ps2pdf) to make the PDF.

This worked good for me, cause I then needed to get more then one quote, so with a loop around the htmldoc and keep appending to the same output file, I got a PDf with all my needed pages.

Code Snippet I used (yea, it's not the best, but it's early code for me):

$tmp="$TMP_DIR/"."Quotes$$"."$USTATUS{USERNAME}.ps";
$htmp="$HTMP_DIR/"."Quotes$$"."$USTATUS{USERNAME}.pdf";
$tmp2=$tmp;
$tmp2=~s/\.ps$/\.pdf/gi;

`>$tmp`;
my $ctr=0;
my $tlog="$Q::all_quotes";
$tlog=~s/:/ /g;
&logme('Quotes-PDF', "Getting PDF for quotes $tlog");
print "Processing quotes ";

foreach $id (reverse split /:/, $Q::all_quotes) {
    $ctr++;
     print " $id ";
     `htmldoc -t ps --header '' --no-numbered --size letter --bodycolo
+r white --left .5in --right .5in  --webpage "http://localhost/cgi-bin
+/po/index.cgi?session=$SESSION&user=$USTATUS{USERNAME}&qdetail=$id&no
+ip=noip" >> $tmp`;
}

`ps2pdf $tmp $tmp2`;
[download]

Now $tmp2 is my PDF file.
Another program I use alot for making PDF's is a2ps which is Anything-To-Postscript which is alot easier for converting straight text or reports. I built a magic lp or Samba printer that takes print jobs and converts them to a PDF that then gets emailed back to the user with these methods.

ronzo