I have just installed the free version of BullZip PDF Printer and I want to send .docx documents to this printer without Word installed and it must be free using managed .NET code.
The reason for this is that I have an AngularJS web application and a REST back end that I am developing for a personal project so commercial alternatives are out of the window for cost reasons.
My web application basically generates invoices from a Word .dotx template and I'd like these sent to the BullZip PDF printer where I can monitor the output folder and grab the PDF file before sending it to the browser via REST.
Most examples and suggestions all seem to lean towards using Word installed on the server, or purchasing commercial software and none of these are suitable for me.
There must be some free library in existence these days that can do this without having to buy expensive software for such a simple task.
You can't send a .docx to the Bullzip printer, because it does not accept .docx as a format. It accepts PostScript. In order to get PostScript you open the .docx file in an appropriate application and print it to the printer, the application draws the document content onto the context, and Windows takes care of converting that into PostScript.
The task may seem simple to you, it isn't.
If you don't want to use word then try OpenOffice or LibreOffice instead. Those are the only decent applications I know of which are free and can read .docx files.
Related
My company uses pdflib to generate pdf and now they are thinking of moving to indesign.
I am doing some initial evaluation, this is our normal process:
designer designs the layout of a pdf.
developers put real texts in. Text lengths can vary, so developers will call some function to determine how much spaces it need and if it is over a page, developer will create a new page with some pdflib api.
Can I do the same thing with indesign server?
You can certainly do what you're doing in pdflib and then some with InDesign Server ("IDS"). IDS has minimal "server" features and is mainly a headless version of desktop Adobe InDesign. There are basically two parts to making a PDF from InDesign Server:
Call the server and tell it to make the PDF (this is typically a
SOAP message that tells IDS what script to run and what data source,
possibly passing data and/or job parameters with the SOAP message).
Run a script with ExtendScript (while there are other languages you can automate IDS with, this is far and away the most common).
You can find the scripting documentation for InDesign CS6 and earlier scripts here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/indesign/sdk.html
Download the Adobe CS6 Scripting SDK (and possibly the InDesign CS6 Server SDK, though really the Scripting SDK and the IDS documentation installed with IDS is all you need). The Scripting SDK includes the "InDesign Server Scripting Guide" which includes a "Hello World" example that makes a document and exports it to PDF.
The scripting in InDesign CC is available only through the pre-release program: you need to apply to Adobe to get access if this matters to you. CC is actually extremely similar to the CS6 version--the main difference is in added features. A script that works in CS6 is likely to work in CC.
I need to develop a service able to convert MS Office and Open Office documents to PDF. And the PDF`s also need to be commentable when opened in ADOBE Reader.
I have used a piece of software from www.neevia.com. And it does the conversion, but is not able to make the PDF´s commentable and is therefore useless in my scenario.
Ideally I would like a piece of software that is monitoring a directory, and when a file is commited to that directory, the software detects this, fetches the file, converts it, and puts it in another directory. This way I can programmatically put the file I want converted in the IN folder and monitor the OUT folder to fetch the file when converted.
So do anyone know a piece of software capable of converting MS Office and Open Office files to commentable PDF`s?
It sounds like you're after the "Extend Features In Acrobat Reader" document rights feature that's part of Acrobat Professional. If you want a programmatic way of doing it then Adobe LiveCycle is the only game in town. This is one of the features that Adobe keeps for itself and no third party is legally allowed to provide it.
You could programmatically, using office automation, print documents to a postscript printer driver to get a postscript file, then use GhostScript to convert the PS file to PDF. Not sure of the commentable features supported by Adobe Reader as opposed to the full version of Acrobat, but it should create a reasonably well supported PDF file.
A-PDF may do what you want, it's web site claims it can convert office docs into PDF including batch convertion with watching a folder.
Both Office 2007 and OpenOffice can save directly to PDF, so you could automate that process.
However, changing the "document rights" of the PDF to allow commenting is something that only Adobe Acrobat can do. (This is Adobe's way of selling more product). There are other 3rd-party tools out there that claim to be able to do it (google change pdf +"document rights"), but I can't vouch for any of them.
I believe the commentable features are part of the PDF software, and not the file. Adobe Professional will allow to add comments, while the reader has less capabilities.
Hmmm, you can develop your own or just buy it off the shelf. My company (shameless plug) has a product that does server based PDF Conversion for common Office formats and can be invoked via a web service.
Blogged about it here. Making office work reliably on the server (32bit/64bit, Win2K3/Win2K8) is challenging to say the least.
Clutching at straws here, I think I remember seeing a solution to this somewhere but can't find it now.
The issue is that I need a Windows application (not .Net) to be able to generate PDFs. The "standard" solution is to use something like PDF995 or CutePDF which create a dummy printer that your application can then print to and it is redirected to a PDF file. The problem is that to control those printers requires updating INI files or registry keys and that is error prone and often runs into concurrency problems.
Building the PDF file programmatically isn't an option, it needs to be able to take the output that would normally be sent to a printer, or possibly convert directly from an Excel file.
Ideally, I'd just pass the Excel file to a COM/ActiveX object and it would write to a file I specify. Next best option would be for it to create a separate printer per print job or have some reasonable way of guaranteeing the filename I give will have the document I print.
This Excel to PDF Batch converter might do the trick as at least it has a command line mode, has anyone tried that? It would only solve the problem for Excel files though.
So, is there a better solution?
(As a side note, for Visual FoxPro reports XFRX works really well, it converts the report directly to a PDF without needing a printer driver.)
You might want to look at BullZip (google it because I cannot add hyperlinks yet). We recently had Jody Meyer present this tool at the Detroit Area Fox User Group (previously shown at the Grand Rapids Area Fox User Group too). It was a great session.
She showed how to use the COM object to automate a ton of the BullZip features including the name of the file and properties like author and keywords. Watermarks are a snap too. It is simple and straightforward and her example was rock solid. Tons of features already done for you so you can simply re-engineer the demo form.
You can download it on the DAFUG Web site, in the downloads folder. File name is BullZipDemo.zip (google Detroit Area Fox User Group) and add the folder and filename.
Rick
VFP MVP
For this scenario I would recommend Amyuni PDF Converter. It provides a Microsoft Certified PDF Printer and ActiveX/.Net controls to communicate with it. Concurrency issues can be avoided by using these controls.
Disclaimer: I am part of the development team of this product.
How can I programmatically convert RTF documents to PDF?
OpenOffice.org can be run in server mode (i.e. without any GUI), can read RTF files and can output PDF files.
You have a number of options depending on:
the platform(s) your application will be running on
whether your application will be a server application (e.g. a web service that you set up once and then it runs), or a widely-available desktop application (e.g. something that must be easily downloadable and installable by many people)
whether you are willing to put little or more programming effort into getting the solution to work
whether you are flexible as to the programming language you will use
Here are some options:
PDFCreator + COM
Windows only
suitable for both desktop and server applications
medium programming effort
any language that allows you to speak COM
OpenOffice ( + JODConverter - optional )
Cross-platform (Windows, Linux, etc.)
suitable for server applications, as OpenOffice is a 100MB+ download
low programming effort
Java (if using JODConverter), or any language that can interface with OpenOffice's UNO
IText + Apache POI
Cross-platform (Windows, Linux, etc.)
suitable for both desktop and server applications
high programming effort
Java
EDIT
Here is an older post that has some commonality with your question.
EDIT 2
I see from your comments that you are on Linux and open to either C++ or Java. Definitely use option 2.
JODConverter (Java): the library takes care of spawning OpenOffice in headless mode and talking Uno to it on your behalf. You provide JODConverter with an input and output file name as well as the input and output types (e.g. rtf and pdf), and when it returns to you the output file is ready.
C++: you can fork+exec one (or more, for load balancing) OpenOffice instances in headless mode (soffice will listen for UNO requests on a socket e.g. port 8100.) From your application use Uno/CPP to instruct OpenOffice to perform the conversion the same way JODConverter does (see the JODConverter source code for how to do this.)
/opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice.bin \
-accept=socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp; \
-headless -nocrashreport -nodefault \
-nolockcheck -nologo -norestore
I am successfully using JODConverter from a Java app to convert miscellaneous document types (some documents dynamically generated from templates) to pdf.
Four years late to the party here, but I use Ted in my web application. I generate RTF programmatically, then use the rtf2pdf.sh script included in the package to generate the PDF. I tried OOo and unoconv previously, but Ted proved faster and more reliable in my application.
Use PDFCreator, a free pdf printer. Just print to pdf. You can control this through COM. Example code is in the COM folder of the install directory.
PDFCreator for windows is the easiest for single documents.
It's also possible to automate PDF creation for large sets of documents by converting them to XML and using XSLT and XSL-FO. There are lots of tutorials for this out there.
For a specific language, such as python, libraries exist to output to PDF fairly trivially.
The only advantage of XML over other simpler solutions is extensibility. You could also programmatically output your document in RTF, HTML, TXT, or just about any other text format.
LibreOffice can convert RTF documents to PDF via command line.
Here are the instructions to install it on CentOS.
And this is an example to initiate conversion from PHP code:
<?php shell_exec('libreoffice4.2 --headless --invisible --norestore --convert-to pdf test.rtf'); ?>
PrimoPDF. It acts as a virtual printer, so you just print to it, and out pops a PDF.
Look at PDF Printer
We are developing a little application that given a directory with PDF files creates a unique PDF file containing all the PDF files in the directory. This is a simple task using iTextSharp. The problem appears if in the directory exist some files like Word documents, or Excel documents.
My question is, is there a way to convert word, excel documents into PDF programmatically? And even better, is this possible without having the office suite installed on the computer running the application?
Office 2007 allows for this. I have found PDFCreator to be good, the VBA is included in sample files, and have heard that CutePDF is also good. PDFCreator and CutePDF are free.
To work without Office, you would need viewers, as far as I know:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c8378bf4-996c-4569-b547-75edbd03aaf0&displaylang=EN
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en
I needed to do this myself, but managed to get it done with .Net and without 3rd party tools:
MSDN: Saving Word 2007 Documents to PDF and XPS Formats
Pretty simple, about 50 lines of code. However I think you will need Word 2007 installed on the machine as well as the ability to Save As PDF
To convert Word documents to PDF, take a look at jWordConvert, a java library that can do exactly that. This will not work with the Excel files though, only with the Word files. The language is not Sharp, it's Java but you could switch to use IText (which is java) instead of ITextSharp.
You can also use a component like activePDF's DocConverter to convert a lot formats to PDF.
Use PDF maker that comes with adobe 7- 9
I just used this code Covert Doc to PDF
I'm surprised Aspose wasn't mentioned here, it's easy, simple, and reliable. Downside is that it is not free.
I've used iTextSharp in the past, it's really good, easy to install (one DLL I believe), the merge takes a bit of tindering so it's not as easy to use as Aspose, but hey, it's free so that is the best part.
TallPDF.NET (comes with a hefty price tag) allows you to serve dynamic PDF from any .NET application including ASP.NET pages and web services.
PDFEdit (free and open source) is an editor for manipulating PDF documents. It has a GUI version and a command-line interface. Scripting is used to a great extent in the editor and almost anything can be scripted. It is possible to create your own scripts or plugins.
The most common way to convert files to a pdf is to print them to a pdf printer driver. There are a number of such drivers, one that i know of that will do the job is Black Ice.
Another is to use Adobe Acrobat's SDK. from memory its very expensive.
Its been a while since i have actually done any work with converting pdf's and the landscape may have changed.