Programmatically generate high quality PDFs

Question

Note: I realize this question has already been asked (with a ruby slant) here: Creating on-demand, print-quality PDFs (preferably in Ruby if feasible). BUT there was no decent answer IMHO.

So as you may have guessed, I am looking to find the best approach to producing HIGH QUALITY, print ready PDF documents programmatically. Our requirements need us to be able to have design documents that define place holders for dynamic content like images and text i.e. some kind of template mechanism.

The suggestion has been to use Adobe's InDesign server, but this seems like an expensive solution not to mention a little overkill for our need.

Are there any alternative, cheaper and more fitting solutions out there? The language of the solution doesn't really matter, just as long as it can be executes on a Windows box.

Answer 1

My suggestion would be to look at XSL-FO or thereabouts...

You create an XML doc that describes what you want and there are various libraries and toolkits (I've used XEP from RenderX) that will convert said XML into PDF.

In real terms what we did was take a large lump of data in XML format, use XSLT - templates in effect - to convert the data to formating objects which XEP renders up into something (a 500 page hotel directory with auto-generated TOC and Index) that has been consumed quite happily by at least three different commercial printers. We did some other smaller documents too from time to time.

Downside with this is that its not even remotely a WYSIWYG solution - you're effectively compiling "source code" to get PDF out the back. Upside is that the base technologies are reasonably generic even if the specific toolkits may be a bit less so.