Converting HTML docs to PDFs

[Renee Bornstein]

Hi all,

 

Just joined; hope I'm not repeating earlier discussions.

 

I've got an assignment to document an XML API.  There are a few good
tools for converting the XML to HTML, where the schema shows up in nice
frames and tables, complete with helpful diagrams.  But the boss says we
must produce PDFs as well. I've been researching HTML-->PDF conversion
tools and it seems there are two categories: free/cheap that don't do a
very good job, and $3K+ that do wa-ay more than I need.  The first
category of tools produce PDFs that are either too small to read, or
only capture part of the page (I could just print the original HTML if I
wanted that), and don't have a clue about page breaks, etc. This
category includes tools like HTML2PDF Pilot and PDFonlin.  The second
category of tools produce beautiful PDFs, including nested tables, table
header continuations, and even the capability to put a Print To PDF
button on my webpages. The best I saw was Corda HighWire.  However, I
don't have a budget for $3,000. I don't really have a budget at all, but
might could talk my way into a program that's under $500.  Anyone been
through this and found a good HTML-->PDF converter?