groff is a fun and easy typesetting utility. If you don't like to use postscript you can also bring in documents in many other formats.

However, if you are generating PDF's from scratch using PHP, a better and more portable alternative to using external commands may be to use the excellent FPDF library at www.fpdf.org. It's writtin in pure php and is very capable when generating PDF's. The license terms are also very accomidating (vs libpdf especially).. Even if PHP is not your thing, there are bindings for some other languages too (though they still require that PHP be installed)

I appreciate your comment. I had looked at FPDF. It is a very good choice for a document where items are placed in various places on the page. It was a little cumbersome, however, for just flowing out long paragraphs of wrapped text. For simple text to a PDF the simple workflow that could be had with groff was a real plus. Also, the source file generated by PHP in this workflow was saveable as a draft version, so later editing of the text file was an option in the groff based workflow, but wouldn't be with the FPDF workflow.

I agree about FPDF being the best tool for PDF generation out of PHP in general, though.

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Steve Holland