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Subject:RE: Software question - converting HTML to PDF From:"Lech Rzedzicki" <xchaotic -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:34:56 +0200
I would say that the common denominator for HTML and PDF right now is XML.
I'm not if everyone will agree but all the infromation should be stored as
XML and then the output can be generated as an HTML online help or PDF file.
This step is done via XSL Stylesheets.
For editing the actual content in XML I can recommend PTC/Arbortext Epic
Editor. I'd dare to say that it's usability surpasses M$ Word in many ways
as a simple text editing tool.
What's more output to either HTML and printing to PDF is embedded as a
default functionality and is rather easy to set-up.
In such scenario, I suppose that the biggest problem would be converting
HTML to strict XML, but I dare say that this is not that hard either (in
most cases).
Pictures are embedded in XML as referenced entities and it is perfectly
possible to generate both HTML and PDFs with working graphics.
Your description of the problem is very detailed and I really appreciate it,
but my solution insists on using intermediate XML, which means that the
biggest question is how bad is the HTML that you produce now and how hard
would it be to convert it to XML.
The reason why I insist on such approach is that it is the cleanest,
structured, scalable option. I probably could elaborate why is this the best
approach but I think it's a little bit beyond the scope of you question.
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