Printing via Web-based fP

[Fairlight]

Okay, I have a question.  Printing not being my specialty, I'm more than
willing to defer to some outside knowledge.

We have a solution we will want to print from.  Our needs right now are
fairly lean, but specific.  More may be added later, however, so I need to
think in the long term.

Basically, right now we have both reports and forms that have simple but
specific formats, and involve text and line drawing.

My thought was to originally do this with HTML+CSS, but that just plain is
-not- viable in my opinion (and in fact), as you really can't control some
factors adequately.  Printing directly from that format is dicey at best.

My next two alternatives to look at were PrintWiz+WePO, and going with PDF.

PW/WePO has some things going for it.  For one, I've worked with it before.
Well, with WePO anyway.  The PW side should be pretty much like any other
report designing.  I -think- it's a matter of a different printcode table
as far as fP is concerned.  If I'm mistaken, tell me, as that's a key
assumption--that the learning curve would be shallow on that end of the
output design because it's very similar to designing normal reports.  On
the downsides are cost ($1500 is relatively reasonable in my opinion, but
it's not my budget, it's the client's), and compatibility--namely that it's
an ActiveX-only control, which means either IE, or FireFox with IETab
installed as a plugin.  So far, that's the only way it's going to work.
This may be viable short-term, but I'm not so sure about long-term,
especially at that price.

PDF...is a whole other can of worms.  I have looked at a LOT of solutions
in the last week.  Basically I've been looking at PCL to PDF converters.  I
can't find one for under $795, and I didn't have entire confidence in that
particular one.  Seems like $1900+ is about standard for this
functionality.  The one that comes highly recommended, jetpcl, is just an
ungodly sum of money to pay for the functionality, especially in the
context of the project as a whole.

I've looked at ghostpcl, but the problem is that I'm on Windows for this
project.  The instructions for compiling under MVSC++ do not hold up under
the 2005 Express Edition of VC++, and I can't find a precompiled binary
distribution of it (I'm wondering -why-, but the fact remains it apparently
can't be had).

I also looked at another package like WePO that was written in Java, which
also had a rather large pricetag attached, but which would be truly
cross-platform.

So...  I'm wondering after all of this what the best move is in others'
opinions.  Is there a less expensive, yet reliable way to get text plus
line drawing output (nothing hugely fancy, just where we actually want
things, not the "best guess" that CSS would give us), in a portable format
that will reproduce exactly, and at a fair price--preferably as portably as
possible?

Any constructive input would be appreciated.  I'm sure this has been
tackled before.  I know of some of the alternatives, but perhaps not all of
them.  Hence the questions.

Thanks!

mark->