creation of a document with info displayed in tables

HI all,

First off, I want to say that I am not so far along in this project that I am ready to do this yet, but I am already making a lot of thoughts on how I should go about it. I have a program with a good deal of data organized in tables. I want to have the ability for the user to print this data out, organized in a business friendly way, basically how it is already displayed, but without the back ground colors etc. I was thinking that it would be possible to program an html table with the data with for loops adding the rows and columns etc and that the user could print it directly out of the browser, but that somehow that does not hit my "naw dats a professional solution" button. I was also thinking of the possibility of exporting the data to excel, but that hits another personal peeve I have: a strong dependancy on another program that the user might not have available. (not to mention my utter dislike for most things microsoft) Furthermore, I want the user to be able to have these documents saveable on their systems. I was wondering if anyone out there has any ideas of how this task can be accomplished for someone who is not exactly a world class programmer. Is there a way to perhaps create a .pdf file? How difficult would that be, and is it possible to programmatically create a .pdf with tables etc.?

Greg