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

Solution Components
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free but does not always produce good output for documents with images or nonstandard
fonts.The ps2pdf converter comes with the Ghostscript package mentioned previously.
Obviously, if you are going to create a PDF file this way, you will need to create a
PostScript file first. Unix users typically use either the a2ps or dvips utilities for this
purpose.
If you are working in a Windows environment, you can also create PostScript files
without Adobe Distiller, albeit via a slightly more complicated process.You need to install
a PostScript printer driver. For example, you can use the Apple LaserWriter IINT driver.
If you don’t have a PostScript driver installed, you can download one from Adobe at
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=44&platform=
Windows.
To create your PostScript file, you need to select this printer and the Print to File
option, typically found on the Print dialog box.
Most Windows applications then produce a file with a .prn extension.This should
be a PostScript file.You should probably rename it to be a .ps file.You should then be
able to view it using GSview or another PostScript viewer, or create a PDF file using the
ps2pdf utility.
Be aware that different printer drivers produce PostScript output of varying quality.
You might find that some of the PostScript files you produce give errors when run
through the ps2pdf utility.We suggest using a different printer driver.
If you intend to create only a small number of PDF files, Adobe’s online service
might suit you. For $9.99 a month, you can upload files in a number of formats and
download a PDF file.The service worked well for our certificate, but it does not let you
select options that are important for this project.The PDF created will be stored as a
binary file and compressed.This makes it very difficult to modify.
This service can be found at https://createpdf.adobe.com/.
A free trial option is available for this service if you want to test it. Additionally, you
can use the free service at http://www.acrobat.com if you have fewer than five PDFs to
create.
You can also check out a free Web-based interface to ps2pdf at the Net Distillery:
http://www.babinszki.com/distiller/.
A final option would be to encode the certificate in XML and use XML Style Sheet
Transformations (XSLT) to convert it to PDF and any other desired formats.This
method requires a good understanding of XSLT and is not covered here.
Software to Create PDF Programmatically
Support for creating PDF documents is available from within PHP. PHP’s PDFlib functions
use the PDFlib library, available from http://www.pdflib.com/products/pdflibfamily/.
PDFlib provides an API of functions to generate a PDF document.