mPDF tutorial for Mozilla Festival 2016

Time: Sunday, 11:00am-11:45am

Place: Localisation, Floor 6 - 607

Why use PDF, when HTML is so much easier?

PDF connects you to the global publishing supply chain
It offers precise control over layouts
A vector format means crisp fonts and graphics
~~It is a secure format and cannot be modified~~

Of all the open source tools, why use mPDF?

Specialised for making books
Support for a very wide range of languages
Bundled with global language fonts to work out of the box
Ready-made features provide table of contents, indexes, bookmarks

Getting started with PHP

Command-line PHP support must be installed
- Debian/Ubuntu apt-get install php5-cli
- Red Hat/CentOS yum install php-cli
- Windows (non thread safe version for x86 or x64 from http://windows.php.net/download/)
- Mac (enabled by default)
Check PHP version installed with php -v

Download and install mPDF and examples

Download and unpack mPDF
- wget https://github.com/mpdf/mpdf/archive/v6.1.2.zip
- unzip v6.1.2.zip
Download and unpack the tutorial examples
- wget https://github.com/booktype/mPDF-examples/archive/v0.1.zip
- unzip v0.1.zip
Change to the examples directory
- cd mPDF-examples-0.1

Run the example PHP scripts

Run each script by name:
- php arabic.php
- php chinese.php
- php english.php
Check the results in your PDF viewer, e.g. on Debian/Ubuntu:
- evince arabic.pdf
Examine the PHP and source files, e.g:
- bluefish arabic.php

Comments to https://github.com/booktype/mPDF-examples/issues please!