I am trying to save a customized html file as a pdf.. normally I would press ctrl-P at my browser (chrome) and print as pdf..
But when I open the pdf file, there is no bookmark tab on the left side of the pdf reader (adobe)..
What I want is to save an html file as a pdf and the bookmark should appear in the left side of the pdf reader:
I created the html file.. I added links to some parts of it using id and hyperlink:
part1
...some codes here...
<div id="part1">
and it works, but I don't know how to create a bookmark in pdf from an html... normally ms word or libre office can convert their documents to pdf with a bookmark..
But how can I made a pdf with a bookmark using HTML?
Okay, so I ran into this problem and really wanted there to be a solution here that worked. When there wasn't, I figured I should add what I found so that hopefully the next developer can benefit from it.
First up: HTML conversion to PDF isn't really up to the HTML itself - it's up to whatever the conversion engine decides to do with your HTML. So for instance, if your approach is: Open it in IE/Chrome/Firefox/whatever > File > Print > Microsoft Print to PDF - well, your conversion engine is 'Microsoft Print to PDF'. Doesn't matter what browser you were using at that point - all its doing is creating a print stream to send to a printer. So if Microsoft Print to PDF isn't going to make bookmarks for you (which it doesn't) then it doesn't matter which web browser you use to open the PDF.
And this is the critical problem with any Ctrl-P / Print avenues. The web browser is ultimately creating a print stream, which the conversion library simply streams into a PDF. And all the web browsers I looked at do not have native support built in to convert to PDF (why would they? 99% of the use cases are covered with a 'Print to PDF' functionality.) And the print drivers I tried (Microsoft Print to PDF, Adobe PDF Print) didn't manage to suss out bookmarks from the raw print stream. Which makes sense.
So, at this point, what you're looking for is a standalone PDF Conversion engine - something that can actively open the HTML file and convert from there, instead of going through a web browser. Are there PDF Conversion engines that do this and add Header-Tag based bookmarks? Possibly. The ones we had at our disposal (ABCPdf, Neevia) weren't able to do it, but it's certainly possible there's one out there.
So what now?
There are a few different options I explored.
Option #1: Separate Files, Combined With Adobe
Adobe Acrobat (non-viewer version), when it's the conversion engine, will automatically add bookmarks for each file it converts. So you can submit the HTML contents, not as a single HTML file, but as HTML files for each section you want a bookmark over.
The good news is that if a section has a hyperlink that points to another document its merging, it's smart enough to have that hyperlink point to the spot within the internal PDF its creating (it's not an external hyperlink like I expected it would be). There are two bits of bad news, though:
Each section has to be the start of a PDF page. If your section is
two inches tall, the rest of the page will be blank, and the next
section will start on the following page.
The bookmarks aren't clean. When I did it, each file had 3
bookmarks. Which is pretty darned ugly and off-putting.
Option #2: Separate Files, Combined With Another Library
The first 'downside' of Option #1 might not be a problem. But the second is pretty ugly. And other libraries definitely can create the bookmarks without creating 3-per-file. The main obstacle here is: the library has to be smart enough to resolve those 'external' hyperlinks to within the PDF that's created. One thing that often hurts is that those conversion libraries often want to convert each separate file to a PDF internally first and then merge the PDFs together... but that means that it won't handle the cross-file hyperlinks correctly. I wasn't able to find a way to make this work with our existing PDF conversion libraries.
Option #3: Different Origination Method
Instead of having a 'Help.html', which is then converted to PDF somehow, start with a format other than HTML. And the easiest source to get into PDF+Bookmarks is MSWord+Headers. Generally, for each PDF help file you want, you can have a master .DOCX sitting somewhere behind the scenes. We've used this approach before, and while it's not the most elegant, it at least works pretty well.
Option #4: Programmatic with Library
This might not be applicable for the OP's use case... but if you're generating the help, there's nothing to say you can't use the PDF Conversion library programatically to add whatever bookmarks you want. Pretty much every PDF engine I've seen allows API access to bookmarks, so if this avenue is open to you, it's almost certainly the cleanest solution-wise.
Option #5: PDF Conversion Scouring
Like I mentioned, it's possible there's a PDF conversion engine out there that has a good HTML parsing engine and can handle bookmarks from various HTML tags (like H1, H2, etc.) However, it's probably going to take a bit to find it, because it's so much easier for a potential engine-writer to allow the file to be rendered with a native viewer. Think about it. If you were writing a PDF Conversion Service, which would you rather do:
Develop routines that can accurately render an HTML document fed
into it - aka, basically write your own web browser from scratch.
Have IE/Chrome/Whatever render it and simply take their print output
to convert to PDF.
... that second option is so ridiculously easier than the first, that it's no surprise most PDF Conversion engines don't have their own internal HTML parser (or for that matter, Word parser, Excel parser, etc.)
The bookmarks in html input document are set like this:
....
...
...
...
<h1 id="marcador1"> Chapter 1 </h1>
...
Don't use chrome, although it is simple to convert a web page to a PDF file. If you want pdf bookmarks, you can try microsoft word (2010). Just save the web pages to local, and open it with MS word 2010, then save it as pdf. The bookmark is there. see also: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/PDF2.html
App comparison for converting PDF (regarding bookmark & internal hyperlink)
I did some tests for different app, (results may not be accurate due to personal settings / mis-used)
pdf bookmark
internal hyperlink
downloaded as .htm
file format looking
Chrome (print as PDF)
N
Y
N
looks same as the webpage
Calibre
Y
N/Y
Y
looks same as the webpage
Print Friendly & PDF 2.8.1 (Chrome Extension)
N
Y
N
syntax color is changed
WPS docx
N/Y
N
Y
format is changed a lot
Foxit PDF
N
N
Y
looks same as the webpage
Adobe PDF
N
N
Y
looks same as the webpage
MS Word docx
Adobe PDF (Chrome Extension)
annotation:
pdf bookmark = contains bookmark in PDF file
internal hyperlink =
Y = the web hyperlinks inside jumps to the position in the PDF internally
N = the web hyperlinks inside opens an external web link in your browser
downloaded as .htm =
Y = the webpage is downloaded as .htm then converted to PDF
N = the webpage is directly converted in Chrome browser
file format looking
(Though I said "looks same as the webpage", its not "exactly" same as the webpage -- you need to config the settings when you convert.
Also some minor parts / components of the webpage may or may not be contained in the PDF.)
Calibre Usage
To use Calibre (As shown, Calibre contains the bookmark. But it doesnt have internal hyperlink.)
webpage is downloaded as .htm (along with a folder)
drag the .htm into Calibre, it becomes a .zip file
use Convert books to convert .zip to .pdf
You may need to set up the bookmark detection mechanism in Convert books > Table of Contents if Calibre doesnt detect it.
Calibre is highly customizable on the conversion
(wish I know how to solve the issue of "not having internal hyperlink" directly inside Calibre, without going through HTTrack)
To use Calibre, with HTTrack to add internal hyperlink:
use HTTrack to download the webpage
(with depth of level of 1 (--ie: just current webpage), should be enough)
(you may need to config it so that it captures external files like images / syntax-format files)
drag the index.html into Calibre ... (proceed same as [2~4] above)
(you need to enable the option of creating the index.html)
WPS docx Usage (not recommend)
webpage is downloaded as .htm (along with a folder)
save as .docx
output as .pdf (enable the option convert title style format to bookmark)
(if no title style format is detected, that may due to the title are actually in the style format of hyperlink style format, you need to manually remove all those hyperlink style format.)
note
testing subject weblink is this ; (testing result PDF are not posted here)
Again, I could be wrong -- results may not be accurate due to personal settings / mis-used
Personally, I believe big companies like Adobe should have such functionality to include bookmarks in PDF. It just I dont know how to do it...
Related
Paul Irish gave some amazing insight on web tooling this time during googleio 2013. So he was presenting some slides that had been parsed into html from a markdown source i.e a .md file.
However one thing that surprised me was when he edited the source markdown for the slides in the chrome dev tools sources panel and then hit refresh, the .md automatically compiled again into the html to be output on the browser. Now I understand that the changes he made to the markdown file in the chrome dev tools were made also on his local file saved on the computer, but how did the markdown file automatically get converted into the html file upon save and refreshing the browser?
I am a complete beginner with markdown and I would really like to have this functionality. Any help is deeply appreciated
The whole purpose of markdown is that it is both human readable and machine readable. It is designed to be converted to HTML.
Depending on the language you are using, there are markdown parsers that create HTML for you.
For example, for PHP.
So, as an example, to have your server show the contents of say, homepage.md, your index.php file could have something like this:
$filename = $_GET['file'];
$content = markdown( file_get_contents( "path_to_markdown/{$filename}.md" ) );
print $content;
And, to see it in your browser you would go to example.com/?file=homepage
I will do my best to answer this.
HTML Mark down is a shorthand syntax that can be interpreted by a web browser to format or render the page in html.
this is taken from Stack Overflow.
eg
The syntax is based on the way email programs
usually do quotations. You don't need to hard-wrap
the paragraphs in your blockquotes, but it looks much nicer if you do. Depends how lazy you feel.
So, like converting from a file in notepad ++ from text to html. The file will be formatted using the basic rules of that particular syntax.
It also must be remembered, that programs are not mind readers. If the mark down code is not valid, neither will the corresponding html code. Just as saving a text file that is "supposed" to be formatted in html. It won't save as a working html file if the syntax is incorrect.
Also, markdown is not a total replacement for real code. It cannot cover the breadth and depth of the true coding language. I could liken it to pseudocode, but that is more of a lateral example.
In answer to your latest comment, If a second file is created from a first file (and the format is altered) -( in this case from mark down to html) - If the first file is then edited, without overwriting the changes into the second file, it cannot expect to be altered.
This is a good link a fellow SO gave me:
https://stackoverflow.com/editing-help
Please feel free to edit, if I have made an error.
I haven't tried this extension for Chrome but it seems to automatically render markdown (.md) files in Chrome.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-preview/jmchmkecamhbiokiopfpnfgbidieafmd?hl=en
In Firefox, I use the following extension for the same functionality.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/markdown-viewer/
No need for a separate .html file, just save the text file with .md extension and open it in the browser.
Hope that helps.
I'm faced with situation when I need to edit a .mht file (for example: add some text to site).
Could you please suggest a way of editing .mht (web archive) files?
What I've tried:
(editors like: notepad, word);
I-Explorer add-ons (like HTML Quick edit Bar)
An MHTML file is a web page archive format. It is meant to be stored and viewed but not to be edited directly.
However, you can easily extract the MHTML file to a regular HTML document (with linked files), edit it with your favorite HTML editor and then export it back to an MHTML archive (including the linked files).
Since you're using Internet Explorer, note that you can open/save between HTML and MHTML files. This can effectively be used to unpack, edit and repack the MHTML archive. Google Chrome can do this as well.
You may also find software that are able to edit the MHTML file directly (doing the unpacking/repacking in the background). Microsoft Word seems to be able to do this, but depending on your document structure, it may impact the content layout.
A quick look at the wikipedia entry for MHTML shows that it's an archive format, a little bit like a zip or rar archive. In order to edit a .mht you will need to unpack it, edit the required file then repack the archive.
You don't say what platform/software you are using but if you do a websearch for ".mht unpacker" you should be able to find something to do the job.
Unpacking a .mht to a local folder, edit the code and re-save it to .mht won't work. If you save to .mht from a local drive none of the linked files (pictures and whatever else is used for the page other than included within the html file) will be stored in the container.
I used Word (office 365) to open modify and save the changes. Maybe is not a optimal solution but works.
WizBrother.com WizHtmlEditor is a super capable fast and light wysiwyg editor that is ideal for quick assembly of elements because it can accept almost anything you throw at it - an entire screen of formatted html including pictures, rtf, drag-n-drop from a browser, and from clipboard, even media files. It doesn't care if it's editing MHT or HTML or several other formats. It's free - and they have a bulk converter BTW. Do a search and see.
I just open and edit with Microsoft Word. This is actually the official approved way of doing it BTW.
My web application has an feature wherein preformatted RTF documents are used as templates and the user can select the source of data and then merge with the RTF documents templates to create merged RTF files. The RTF templates have placeholders which get replaced with user selected content. The final doc can either be saved or opened directly if word/wordpad is available on the local users machine.
Now, I have a requirement to display the merged document to the user for confirmation. The user may either print or save the document to the system directly. The display should not be word/wordpad application but should be within the application itself, using textarea or something similar to render the document. Can you please let me know if its possible to render the RTF document in textarea or not. Along with the displayed content, there should be options to print and save the document.If I have to convert the RTF to Html and then display the html content in textarea , please let me know how i can do the conversion and then display the html in the page.
That's a very difficult requirement. First of all, let's dismiss the idea about a <textarea>, because it does not support any formatting at all. All the WYSIWYG editors you've seen out there are based on <iframe>s.
Secondly, no browser can directly display a RTF. You can embed it as an <object>, and some might show it (IE probably will), but I can't say which ones won't. Portable devices almost certainly won't. But you should test this though, maybe it works well enough after all.
Failing that, HTML conversion is also out of question, because RTF has very very many features that cannot be emulated in HTML. There are some converters out there (google), but but they will all come with serious limitations. If you want full support, you will have to do your own rendering via Canvas or Flash or something.
To this end I'd suggest checking out Google Docs. They've gone through all of this hassle and have a rather feature-full engine for displaying most possible documents. I think it was also possible to embed them in your own webapges, though I've never checked it out myself.
Use a <PRE> tag to Display/Render RTF doc in browser.
Using HTML5 File API I am able to read text and XML files without any problems. I have tried to read the .docx/.doc file with the same code and that was not working. In my chrome extension I need to open a .doc/.docx file in editable mode in Google chrome. I am really waiting to know all the possible ways to achieve this. I found some extensions like Google docs viewer etc.. But they are opening files in preview mode. Please help me on this
The .DOC file is binary, and DOCX is a zip file containing a whole collection of XML files that make up a Word document, so neither can easily be read by your straight XML reader.
I don't think there are any native extensions or bits of code for Chrome to edit DOC or DOCX files, so you'd have to write your own - presumably, that's what the extension you're considering would do. You can use the Google docs viewer as a jumping off point - there's no difference between "preview mode" and "edit mode" other than one writes back to the file and the other doesn't. And you'd need to add the controls to modify the document on screen, which may be the larger hurdle.
If you can give some detail on where exactly you're stuck, that might help the community point you towards a solution, but a general "nothing does this for me" is likely to result in a little less help.
Good luck!
you can use jquery for this.
you can use typewith me which is generated in jquery where you can import/export docx,doc.pdf,etc.. files check type with me and private pad
you can use its jquery code for your use as it is opensource.
I currently have a "PrintingWebService" that I call from an AJAX page with all the information that is needed to construct a highly customized PDF printout using PDF Sharp and the PDFSharp's GDI+ mode, which takes DrawString and other commands that work basically just like GDI+ only they are drawn to the PDF.
I then save the PDF file to a location on the webserver and return the file name from the web service, and the AJAX page opens a new window with the pdf file.
So far, it works well, however, there is one part of my AJAX page that I want to printout and I haven't come up with a solution for yet. I've got a string of the HTML content of a TinyMCE editor that I want to dispay in the bottom part of the PDF page.
I'm looking for some sort of tool I could use for this purpose. Even something opensource that prints to GDI+ I could use by taking the source code and translating it to use PdfSharp's GDI+ (the class names are like XGraphics, with each class having X before the GDI+ name).
If I have to I will limit what HTML can be generated by TinyMCE and write my own renderer, but that will be a big challenge, so I'm looking for other solutions first.
I've stayed away from a printer-friendly page approach because I wanted to construct a page that was a near identical of an existing WinForms printout, using my existing code. With PdfSharp I was able to convert all the code except the text area stuff (which used the RichTextBox and RTF in the WinForms version).
Tony,
I personally have used WebSupergoo's ABCPdf library with much success. You can actually render HTML directly to the PDF and it does fairly well in regards to accuracy.
Another free software that will allow you the flexibility of writing HTML to PDF that I have used in the past with much success is iTextSharp.
Otherwise, I think you'll have to write something to render HTML to GDI.
Either way, you may want to consider using an HttpHandler that you map to using your web.config to generate the PDF file. This will allow for you to render the PDF to a bytestream and then dump it directly to the user (as opposed to having to save each PDF receipt to the web server). It will also allow for you to use the .pdf extension in the page that returns the receipt (PurchaseReceipt.pdf could be mapped to a HttpHandler)... making it more cross-browser friendly. Older versions of Adobe / Browsers will not display correctly if you start throwing a PDF byte stream from an ASPX page.
Hope this helps.