Screaming Penguin

I have used the Apache Formatting Objects Processor (FOP) in the past and it is another *great* resource from the Apache Software Foundation. FOP basically takes XML data and an FOP stylesheet to then create other document types on the fly. The most popular "other" type it is used for is PDF (but it can also be used for TXT, SVG, AWT, MIF, and PS). It is very similar to XML and XSLT with a transformer to produce HTML, XHTML, WML, etc. The beauty is that the processor in FOP is designed for the more specialized document types and can create PDFs on the fly. I have used it for on the fly report generation by allowing a user on a web application page to select the data params they want and then generate a report using HTML or PDF (their choice). Its very cool stuff. Checkout the linked OnJava FOP intro tutorial.