PDF and Dynamic Documents

Anon

Has anyone out there found a way to create dynamic documents using data input on a form that the user can download and print? I was planning on trying to use PDF but once I saw the price tag for PDFlib and ClibPDF, I was discouraged. I've read a lot of notes about this topic but few (if any) people appear to be successful. It seems there is a big need for this but unless you want to spend big $$, you're out of luck. Anybody have any other ideas or suggestions?

Brian

Anon

Creating PDFs is still a big dream and the reaslisation costs. It's quite ridiculous because writing function(s) that creates postscript cannot be so hard (for someone who knows this subject).
In php explanation of functions for creating pdf is far away to be solid; ClibPDF functions simply do not work (for what they still keep it in code?), PDFlib works but are not free.
So, the best solution is adobe (especialy if you have to pay for this); I wrote my own functions to create FDFs.

Anon

I guess it depends on what is dynamic--the layout of the document or just the data in the document. If you have standard forms, then populating them with FDF data is a snap. I use Acrobat to create the PDF forms and form fields. Then I use PHP to populate the forms with the appropriate data. If that will work for you DO NOT waste your time using the FDF Toolkit. It's very frustrating and not necessary. I have an example of creating the FDF data at http://www.phpbuilder.com/snippet/detail.php?type=snippet&id=329. And I have a little more info about the subject at http://www.omnicast.net/gigowiz/computers/fdf.html

Hope this helps.

Hank