On the PHPLiveDocX.org site today there's a new article showing how to generate PDF files with the help of the Zend Framework.

Generating print-ready well-formatted PDF documents with PHP is not an easy task. Traditionally, there are two main approaches to PDF generation with PHP. Given sufficient time and patience, both partially get the job done, but still leave a lot to be desired: HTML-to-PDF and Programmatic (created via X and Y coordinates in a script).

As a third option, the article presents what could be a simpler method - creating templates in Microsoft Word and having PHP populate the data. How? With the help of their Zend_Service_LiveDocx_MailMerge component (still in incubation, coming to ZF 1.10). This allows you to assign values to placeholders in the document and push the result out to a file. Several different documentation templates and code samples are included in the post to get you started.