There are some introductory PDFLIB examples here:
http://bmw.ws.utk.edu/ut/php/
scroll down to "Creating PDF Files On-the-Fly"
Also the guys at PDFLIB were somewhat responsive. They had at one time a two tiered licensing setup. Free for researchers and universities doing non-admininstrative work.
But I think even the full blown license was very reasonable.
Also Jim Thome did a tutorial a few years ago and is helpful.
http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/131
Thanks
J