DocRaptor
There are several popular free HTML-to-PDF libraries including wkhtmltopdf, PhantomJS, and Chrome Headless / Puppeteer. These tools use the Webkit or Chromium rendering engines, which are designed to display continuously scrolling webpages. In contrast, DocRaptor was built for generating multi-page documents. This fundamental difference has a tremendous impact on PDF functionality such as page breaks, headers and footers, and variable page sizes. Our conversion engine provides layout and styling options (including CSS Paged Media support) that the open-source PDF engines simply cannot match. Additionally, as a cloud-based API, we provide professional support, instant scalability, and guaranteed reliability without the costs of long-term maintenance for these libraries and their infrastructure.
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mPDF
mPDF is a PHP library that generates PDF files from UTF-8 encoded HTML. It is based on FPDF and HTML2FPDF with a number of enhancements. It is slower than the original scripts e.g. HTML2FPDF and produces larger files when using Unicode fonts, but supports CSS styles, etc., and has been much enhanced. mPDF as a whole is quite a dated software. Nowadays, better alternatives are available, albeit not written in PHP. Use mPDF if you cannot use a non-PHP approach to generate PDF files or if you want to leverage some of the benefits of mPDF over the browser approach, color handling, pre-print, barcodes support, headers and footers, page numbering, TOCs, etc. But beware that an HTML/CSS template tailored for mPDF might be necessary. If you are looking for state-of-the-art CSS support, mirroring existing HTML pages to PDF, use headless Chrome. mPDF will still be updated to enhance some internal capabilities and to support newer versions of PHP.
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pdfChip
pdfChip is a command-line application for the creation of high-quality PDFs from HTML (taking full advantage of CSS and JavaScript). It supports all HTML features but extends to support CMYK, spot color, XMP metadata, PDF standards, SVG, MathML, barcodes, and more. Capable of generating single and multi-page PDF documents it is ideally suited for high-volume dynamic PDF generation. pdfChip is a command-line application for the creation of high-quality PDFs from HTML, taking full advantage of CSS and JavaScript. pdfChip is based on WebKit technology, it renders your designs quickly and flawlessly into PDF. It allows to creation of fully compliant PDF/X files (for print) or PDF/A files (for archival), in the smallest output PDF size possible. Furthermore, it’s possible to use the exact same HTML and CSS code on the web as well as for PDF generation. pdfChip has a low entry level, as the command-line interface is clear and easy-to-learn.
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Formatter V7
Publish high-quality PDF and printed documents from XML, DITA, and HTML. Choose to style your content with XSL-FO or CSS. Generate PDF documents in almost any language supported by Unicode. Compliant with W3C standards for XSL-FO, CSS, MathML, SVG, and Unicode. AH Formatter is the most powerful automated PDF publishing software and the only one of its kind. It is known for XSL-FO formatting in the documentation industry used for XML, DITA, and S1000D. Over the years, AH Formatter has been expanded with the capability to transform HTML into properly formatted documents with CSS stylesheets. Now users have more options for producing PDFs and can choose to format documents with XSL-FO or CSS! AH Formatter is the fastest XML/HTML to PDF formatting software available. AH Formatter can format documents of virtually any size whether it is a publication, tens of thousands of invoices, reports, or personalized one-to-one documents.
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