Hi, I’m Alan, and I’m interning with OpenGeo this summer.  My first order of business has been plugging MapFish‘s printing capability into GeoServer as a community module; right now we’re releasing a developer preview. The module exposes an HTTP interface that allows the user to ask the server to compose an attractive map in PDF format.  MapFish also provides a JavaScript library that allows easy printing from a OpenLayers map.

Up for trying it out? You’ll need to download a nightly build of trunk and add a few files to it. I have written up step-by-step instructions for anyone interested. If you have any feedback, please chime in on the GeoServer developers mailing list.

EDIT: The print module instructions have been updated for GeoServer .2.0.x.  Please refer to http://docs.geoserver.org/stable/en/user/community/printing/ instead of the old wiki page.