11.4.7     PDF Conclusion

This is NOT the latest copy of this book; click here for the latest version.

In this PDF primer we've explored how to create documents and pages inside them, add fonts of various size and colour, add and manipulate images, and finally how to add non-paginated information to the document. There is a fair amount more to working with PDF files than I have been able to cover here, however the core concepts are all above. There is an excellent forum online at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pdflib where you can ask further questions about using PDFlib, and it is well worth a look if you intend on delving into more advanced areas.

Adding dynamically generated PDFs to your site can be a great boon, especially where official documents are concerned - it is definitely worth the pay-off to take the time to get PDF generation down to a fine art in order to add another valuable item to your PHP toolkit. Admittedly, there are still some limitations in the technology: the inability to load existing documents for editing is the one most commonly cited. However, that disadvantage is almost certainly outweighed by the sheer popularity of the format.