I my eyes, PdfSharpCore¹ is now the "canonical" version of pdfcore.

IMHO the list is incomplete without it.

1: https://github.com/ststeiger/PdfSharpCore

I create PDF files from C# using LaTeX as an intermediate format. This works very reliable but sometimes takes a bit of tinkering until everything fits.

People here on HN recently recommended Typst as a replacement for LaTeX, but I haven't tried it myself yet.

The wider .NET ecosystem is lacking when trying to step out the mainline. I don't bother hunting for unused, partially implemented .NET libraries anymore and just call out to a process or API call when needing to get something done.

It's not ideal, but when there isn't a good option isn't available in .NET it's usually available in Python/npm. Typically I'll use background jobs when calling out of process for added resiliency/replayability and observability.

The wrappers to wkhtmltopdf look to me the best candidates.

Which use-cases needing Qt WebKit is an issue?

I needed this post a year ago when I was looking for this exact thing. I did end up going with Puppeteer because I needed it for something else that I couldn't avoid. I use a large list of flags with it to launch the most minimal version of headless Chrome that I can.

I am going to look into switching to MigraDoc and see if i can drop puppeteer

Thanks for this great research!

Thanks for this post! I've wanted to create such a post for a long while but never got around to it. Yours is fantastic!

Oh yeah, PDF. In a past project I created a monster solution:

  * Scriban to fill in templates (LaTeX)
  * Custom Angular SSR to reuse frontend components (charts etc)
  * Playwright to convert SSR output to PDF
  * LuaLaTeX to convert LaTeX document + stuff to PDF

Super slow, but very high quality results. Do not try this at home!

Scriban is totally awesome though.

>Naturally, I first started looking for permissively licensed libraries, which could be used free of charge and without additional license requirements.

There is a lot of work in a good PDF library, expecting to get it for free feels unreasonable to me.

> obviously needs to be a PDF

I've been making my reports in self-contained HTML files[0] and it works out so much better than PDF. It is not constrained by paper sizes, and it lets me add some nifty features. For example, I recently added support for hiding columns in a table using exclusively CSS. The only downside is browsers can render things slightly differently, but for my use cases I don't need pixel-perfect identical rendering.

[0] Images are inlined base64-encoded, CSS/JS embedded with style and script tags. No external assets / no http requests.

At work we were using I think it was GDPicture? Which is now called Nutrient. They started out with a flat fee, royalty free, then their pricing scheme became more hostile over time (per developer, per application licensing, and I don't recall if they wanted to know how many users - which is crazy unless it's a SaaS). I have friends (former coworkers) and family who ask me for advice on software libraries to use for what, since they know I'm a hyper nerd for that sort of thing, last time a former coworker asked what PDF library to use I told them to avoid Nutrient like the plague. There's wanting to be sustainable and then there's greed.

So yeah I too was looking for permissive licensing. The worst part is now its drastically harder for me to suggest any paid alternatives because we don't know that the alternative wont hike up prices on us. It's a really awful spot to be in.