Prawn is a Ruby gem that makes it easy to generate beautiful and printable PDF documents. It aims to provide the necessary features for PDF generation simply without complexity. Prawn supports UTF-8, easy image embedding, flexible table drawing, and simplified content positioning. The project is currently in alpha but gaining traction with the goal of a stable first release in June 2009.

1. Prawn
Create PDFs with Ruby

2. Tom Klaasen
• Co-founder of (http://10to1.be)
• @tomklaasen
• http://tomklaasen.net

3. Prawn
• Prawn takes the pain out of generating
beautiful printable documents, while still
remaining fast, tiny and nimble.

4. History
• Gregory Brown: “What if I could just do
open source for a while, non-
commercially?”
• http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2008/03/
id_love_to_quit_my_job_sort_of.html

5. Goals
• The features you need, without all the
complexity
• Built in support for UTF-8
• Easy image embedding
• Flexible table drawing
• Simplified content positioning

6. Code Examples

7. “Hello, World”

8. Render a book

9. Render a book (2)

10. Render a book (3)
• PDF: 84 pages
• “Took 6.582318 to generate.”

11. Tables

12. Tables (2)

13. Bounding boxes

14. Bounding boxes (2)

15. The Future
• Now: alpha
• Project is gaining traction quickly
• First stable production release: June 2009

16. How to get it
• gem install prawn

17. References
• http://prawn.majesticseacreature.com/
• http://advent2008.hackruby.com/past/
2008/12/17/
awn_and_the_future_of_ruby_pdf_generat
ion

18. Thank You
• tom@10to1.be
• @tomklaasen
• http://tomklaasen.net