How the pieces fit together

Three ways to reach the same engine. Between two boxes there are always two arrows: the first says what is asked for, the second says what comes back.

1. The customer goes through us

The customer draws their document in a page of this site and gets the finished PDF back. They install nothing and they write no program: everything between the editor and the drawn pages runs here.

1. The customer in the customer's web browser
2. on the way there: → draws the document, and asks for it on the way back: ← the finished PDF, ready to save
3. The online editor a page of this site: open an account and it is yours to use
4. on the way there: → what was drawn, as the editor holds it on the way back: ← the finished PDF
5. The site runs at HQF Development
6. on the way there: → the same document, written out as JSON on the way back: ← the finished PDF
7. The PDF server runs at HQF Development
8. on the way there: → one call per thing to draw: a paragraph, a table, an image on the way back: ← the pages, drawn
9. The PDF library inside the PDF server

What the customer pays for: a subscription, by the month.

2. The customer bought the server and the library

The customer writes the JSON themselves and sends it to a PDF server running at their place. There is no editor and no site in front of it: the chain starts in their own program and never leaves their machines.

1. The customer's own program runs at the customer's
2. on the way there: → the document, written out as JSON on the way back: ← the finished PDF
3. The PDF server runs at the customer's
4. on the way there: → one call per thing to draw: a paragraph, a table, an image on the way back: ← the pages, drawn
5. The PDF library inside the PDF server

What the customer pays for: the server and the library, bought outright.

3. The library on its own

A development team writes Rust or Python and calls the library straight from their program. No JSON travels anywhere, and there is no server: the library is part of what they built.

1. A development team writes Rust or Python
2. on the way there: → calls the library, one instruction per thing to draw on the way back: ← the finished PDF, written to a file or handed back as bytes
3. The PDF library inside the program they wrote

What the customer pays for: the library, bought outright.