Portable Document Format (PDF) has become a universally accepted format for sharing documentation making the dynamic generation of PDF documents an expected feature of many web applications. After reviewing a number of libraries for generating PDF documents it was decided to write a service wrapping LaTeX; a typesetting system with features suited to the production of scientific and technical documentation.
As an exercise in optimising page speed the Pelican theme pelican-bootstrap3 by Daan Debie was customised according to the specific requirements of seth.fischer.nz. The customisations reduced the total number of requests on the index page by 66% and the page size was reduced by 62%.