

Ask HN: which kind of PDFs you generates? - trez

What are the most common use cases for generating a PDF?
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LarryMade2
Graphics - working in Liunx the best way to get "what you print is what you
see" is to create a PDF and then print it with scaling off. Programs such as
LibreOffice and Inkscape printer drivers have not been all that reliable to
print properly, but export to PDF and print overcomes that.

Web Reporting - for web apps creating address label sheets with formatting
that "just works" also is best route via PDF. Secondly is using tools such as
PHP's FPDF/FPDI you can use PHP to programmatically fill out PDF forms, used
that a lot for report forms like the DE542.

The main benefit of PDFs is that the PDF document accurately represents what
you create across platforms (by including fonts, etc.) So it is very important
for presentation documents, reports, and press-ready publication.

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ansgri
Visualizations, e.g. I have a script that composes a huge image from road
traffic video which you can see at different scales. In raster it would be
something like 200 MPx for desired level of detail, whereas in PDF you can
freely mix raster and vector graphics in portable way.

Also, scanned document compression, using Mixed Raster Content technology.

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tptacek
All our client deliverables are PDFs, generated from a JRuby Rails app (I
haven't had a lot of luck with Prawn).

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claudius
Scientific papers, other papers, letters, other texts, documentation,
homework…

Could you maybe be more specific?

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mooism2
I generate a PDF when I want to print something out.

