Exploring two different libraries for pdf generation on ruby I found that they both have the same example (demo.rb) generating the same results (at least to my eyes . One was the venerable PDF::Writer library, the other libharu2.

Here. Have some benchmarks on demo.rb:

#Rehearsal --------------------------------------------------------------------
#PDF Writer 100 times              18.984000   0.547000  19.531000 ( 19.616000)
#Haru 2 100 times                   0.235000   0.281000   0.516000 (  0.517000)
#PDF Writer saving file 100 times  18.531000   0.391000  18.922000 ( 19.836000)
#Haru2 saving file 100 times        0.250000   0.375000   0.625000 (  0.688000)
#---------------------------------------------------------- total: 39.594000sec
#user     system      total        real
#PDF Writer 100 times              18.500000   0.265000  18.765000 ( 18.866000)
#Haru 2 100 times                   0.156000   0.344000   0.500000 (  0.500000)
#PDF Writer saving file 100 times  18.703000   0.203000  18.906000 ( 19.336000)
#Haru2 saving file 100 times        0.172000   0.407000   0.579000 (  0.657000)

In this microbenchmark, libharu2 is almost 40 times faster than PDF::Writer !!! Because I think that libharu2 is very useful,  I packaged it as a gem on rubyforge. Try it:

“sudo gem install hpdf“

Don’t forget to require ‘rubygems’ on your programs before requiring hpdf

HPDF TODO: Documentation, helpers (for example: no table drawer yet). I have only packaged the gem, didn’t add anything to it.