Open Source Ruby PDF Generation Libraries

A fast text processor & publishing toolchain for converting AsciiDoc to HTML5, DocBook & more. Asciidoctor is a fast, open source, Ruby-based text processor for parsing AsciiDoc® into a document model and converting it to output formats such as HTML 5, DocBook 5, manual pages, PDF, EPUB 3, and other formats. Asciidoctor also has an ecosystem of extensions, converters, build plugins, and tools to help you author and publish content written in AsciiDoc.

HexaPDF is a pure Ruby library with an accompanying application for working with PDF files. It was designed with ease of use and performance in mind. It uses lazy loading and lazy computing when possible and tries to produce small PDF files by default.

Prawn is a pure Ruby PDF generation library that provides a lot of great functionality while trying to remain simple and reasonably performant. Extensive text rendering support, including flowing text and limited inline formatting options. Comprehensive internationalization features, including full support for UTF-8 based fonts, right-to-left text rendering, fallback font support, and extension points for customizable text wrapping. Support for PDF outlines for document navigation. Low level PDF features, allowing users to create custom extensions by dropping down all the way to the PDF object tree layer. (Mostly useful to those with knowledge of the PDF specification). If you are looking for a highly flexible PDF document generation system, Prawn might be the tool for you. It is not a reporting tool or a publishing toolchain, though it could be fairly easily used to build those things.