PDF stands for "Portable Document Format" and is used to recreate the
exact look and feel of a hardcopy document. From Word files to complex
CAD drawings, PDF allows display and printing on a wide variety of
hardware and software platforms.
PHP's PDFlib extension (included with the ZIP distribution of PHP)
allows "on the fly" generation of PDF files. A wonderful Devshed
tutorial steps you through PDF creation using PHP, starting with a
simple example of creating a text only PDF and quickly graduating into
image overlays, grids, line drawing, pie charts and more.
Devshed PHP/PDF tutorial
Other PDF tutorials:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/perugini20001026.php3?print_mode=1
http://www.zend.com/zend/tut/tutorial-thome-part2.php
General PDF resources:
http://www.pdfzone.com
http://www.planetpdf.com
Other PHP news
In November, Netcraft reported that PHP was running on 9,866,075
domains (an increase of around 500,000 domains in two months), so the
rise of PHP continues unabated (visit PHP.net).
If you haven't visited Netcraft's site, it's well worth seeing. Using
Netcraft, you can determine what kind of operating system and server
software that a particular web site is running (visit Netcraft site).
Finally, we'll wrap up with our traditional list of large or otherwise
significant organizations that are using PHP to drive their businesses:
CapitalOne, NASA, the W3C, HP, Google, Deutsche Bank, Redhat,
Lycos, Cisco, Ericsson, Volvo, Motorola, SourceForge, Honda, Xoom,
WinAmp, Sony Music, Vodafone, CBS, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young,
the US Army, UPI, the New York Yankees, Southwestern Bell,
the San Diego Zoo, the Oakland Raiders, Audi, Subaru, VA Linux,
Winamp, Duke University, Quicken, The Village Voice, Undernet,
Access Micro, Columbus Dispatch, Indianapolis Star, Yahoo,
Indiana University, Deutsche Telecomm, Bang & Olufsen, Siemens,
Unilever, Philips, BMC, NTT, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Dialpad, BMC,
Mitsubishi, MP3.com, the Arizona Republic, Deloitte Consulting
In case you missed it, a prior PHP Watch article (entitled
'The Business Case for PHP'), seemed to be very popular, turning up
at several software development sites. The article can be found at "The Business Case for PHP".
