[pdftex] php, pdf, latex, ....

[Sebastian Rahtz]

> 
> There was an article in the German "PHP Magazin 02/2003" how to produce PDF
> with the help of PHP and LaTeX.

indeed, its pretty trivial to transform an XML data source to LaTeX and
run it through pdftex. I do it on my own work web site for dynamic PDF.

But
 a) the converse is very far from true: LaTeX to XML is hard (and will
always be so)
 b) transforming to LaTeX leaves you at the tender mercy of one
    idiosyncratic processor and a bunch of uncoordinated style files.
    If instead you transform to XSL FO, you get a choice of 6 or 7 
    processors (including TeX), which has to be better.

Sebastian