Re: HTML to PDF

[Dominic Mitchell]

Paul Makepeace wrote:

What are the options for HTML to PDF conversion, preferably batchable?
By HTML I mean that which is understood by modern browsers, namely up to
XHTML 1.0 + CSS(at least)1.0, rather than HTML 3.2 or something outdated
like that. Just to be even more tricky, the HTML isn't being generated
*from* anything like LaTeX so can't be eliminated as a step.

As far as I know, there isn't an open source answer - the best I've seen
is OS X's ability to save as PDF. What else is there? Can it be
automated? This question may boil down to "does anyone know Distiller?".

I've just seen a release notice from Sean Burke that a new version, 2.01,
of HTML::Format has gone to CPAN. It outputs to postscript, which should
be easily turned into PDF with ghostscript. It doesn't appear to be on search.cpan.org yet, but I'm sure it will be soon.

Here's the announce:

===========================================================================
I've just uploaded HTML-Format 2.01 to CPAN. It's an experimental new version -- "experimental" in the sense of "I'm not sure it'll work perfectly", not in any sense of it being risky or anything.

In case you don't know, HTML-Format contains some modules for rendering HTML to PostScript, plaintext, and RTF.
It requires the new HTML-Tree (3.15) that I've just uploaded.

I would consider it a personal favor if people could try it out and let me know if it works okay. Its been significantly changed since the last release -- notably fixing some newpage bugs in the HTML::FormatPS version, redoing some internals stuff affecting all the modules, and adding a new HTML::FormatRTF.

It still doesn't really support forms or tables, but at least it doesn't just totally skip them anymore.
It also doesn't support rendering images; that's much too messy to even try.
But it's ideally better than just `lynx --dump` or whatever!
===========================================================================

Hmmm, I didn't spot that last bit. That probably makes it a bit less effective for you. :-(

-Dom

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