PHP and MySQL Web Development 4th Ed-tqw-_darksiderg

774 Chapter 32 Generating Personalized Documents in Portable Document Format (PDF)
Rich Text Format
Rich Text Format (RTF) gives you most of the power of Word, but the files are easier to
generate.You still have flexibility over layout and formatting of the printed page.You can
still include elements such as vector or bitmap images. Plus, you can still be fairly sure that
the users will see a similar result to yours when they view or print the document.
RTF is Microsoft Word’s text format. It is intended as an interchange format to transfer
documents between different programs. In some ways, it is similar to HTML. It uses
syntax and key words rather than binary data to convey formatting information. It is
therefore relatively human readable.
The format is well documented.The specification is freely available; search the
Microsoft.com web site for “RTF specification”.
The easiest way to generate an RTF document is to choose a Save As RTF option in
your word processor. Because RTF files contain only text, it is possible to generate them
directly, and existing ones can easily be modified.
Because the format is documented and freely available, RTF is readable by more software
than Word’s binary format. Be aware, though, that users opening a complex RTF
file in older versions of Word or different word processors will often see somewhat different
results. Each new version of Word introduces new keywords to RTF, so older
implementations usually ignore controls they do not understand or have chosen not to
implement.
From the original list, an RTF certificate would be easy to design using Word or
another word processor; is able to contain a variety of different elements such as vector
and bitmap images; gives a high-quality printout; can be generated easily and quickly;
and can be delivered electronically at low cost.
This format works with a variety of applications and operating systems, although with
somewhat variable results. On the downside, an RTF document can be easily and freely
modified by anybody, which is a problem for a certificate and some other types of documents.The
file size might be moderately large for complex documents.
RTF is a good option for many document delivery applications, so you can use it as
one option here.
PostScript
PostScript, from Adobe, is a page description language. It is a powerful and complex programming
language intended to represent documents in a device-independent way—that
is, a description that will produce consistent results across different devices such as printers
and screens. It is very well documented. At least three full-length books are available,
as well as countless Web sites.
A PostScript document can contain very precise formatting, text, images, embedded
fonts, and other elements.You can easily generate a PostScript document from an application
by printing it to a PostScript printer driver. If you are interested, you can even
learn to program in it directly.
PostScript documents are quite portable.They give consistent high-quality printouts
from different devices and different operating systems.