I use shrimp to create simple PDF documents for invoices. Now I need to create a more complex PDF document, and Shrimp is approaching . I need to copy an existing layout exactly so that converting from HTML (a la Princely) is not an option.
Can a good alternative or any alternative be recommended?
iText is probably the best answer developers of any language have for creating PDF files. This is not an ideal answer for you because it is a Java library. However, you might find it worth the time to shut down a Java program that takes data and works with iText to output PDF.
You can also interact with iText through Groovy.
http://itextpdf.com/
iText is very useful. There, around Ruby, the cover is called pdf-stamper, which allows you to fill in the text in the fields - which would be useful for an invoice.
I branched it and added several functions (flags, drawing circles, etc.): https://github.com/paulschreiber/pdf-stamper
iText . PDF PDF . iText - AGPL'd, - LGPL'd. Ruby, jrb, JRuby.
pdftk - ( ) iText. , JRE pdftk. pdftk Ruby.
pdfkit uses its own web server to interpret the web page and converts it to pdf. We use it extensively. Well, if you already know html, it is unusually simple to create templates. Which sucks in the fact that CSS printing support is not the biggest in webkit, so you may run into some problems with more complicated page numbering or page breaks.