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.
Related
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...
I am experimenting with Mediawiki Collection extension, for generating books from my articles (which I find very useful). However it doesn't render everything in the same way my mediawiki instance does.
Namely,
mathjax elements don't render
and pictures don't render as well
For instance, here how things get rendered by wiki
And how they end up in the pdf generated by Collection
I understand the reasons behind this behavior: the rendering is done not by my wiki, but by some external service, which has no idea about my client-side plugins.
My question is: how can I get my wiki render all the pages I want, possibly in HTML with all client-side extensions, and then convert the results to PDF?
When I open a page in "printable" view (with &printable=yes) it renders everything as I want. It could be nice to use that to render multiple pages at once (this is in essence what Collections does...)
Thanks
I ended up creating an extension that takes a list of pages and renders them all to a single page. After that I can just print it
The code is available here
This is how it looks like in PDF now:
Also you can add &printable=yes and it will give you a fully prepared printable version which you can just save as HTML.
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.
I want to use a web browser to present some multimedia information with locally stored HTML files. The problem is that it just presents the static content without any HTML elements, and also doesn't show the images. The sample code is:
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(TitleContainer.OpenStream("pathString"));
webBrowser.NavigateToString(reader.ReadToEnd());
The best way to do this is to copy your html file and images to the same directory in Isolated Storage (see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff431811(v=vs.92).aspx). Then, you call
webBrowser1.Navigate(new Uri("<Location_of_html_file_in_isolatedStorage>", UriKind.Relative)).
If the images and the html file are in the same directory in isolatedStorage, relative links to your images in this format:
<img src="../YourImage.jpg"/>
Will work correctly.
I don't suppose the WebBrowser control could get access to any images that might be stored in isolated storage, so all the content you want displayed - you would probably need to somehow embed it in a single html, which would probably require some js code (I am not a js/html expert), which needs to be enabled in the control (IsScriptEnabled if I remember correctly). Otherwise - it might be better to convert your HTML to XAML or just otherwise parse it and display it by code.
I've edited this quite a bit and bolded my question at this point. I realize that PDF won't be fully controllable in the browser, but that's not my issue here. My problem is, well, below in bold.
<div>
<object
data="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/UB04.xml"
type="application/vnd.adobe.xdp+xml"
width="415" height="500"/>
</div>
The XML is actually an XDP file; it gives dynamic data and a URL for a static PDF, and combines them in Adobe Reader. This displays in the browser as desired if it's a PDF, but when put in as an XDP, it takes control of the window and opens itself fullscreen to display the PDF. Serving an all-in-one XDP (with the PDF embedded as base64) has the same issue.
Help me make the XDP behave the same as a PDF?
Alternatively, if I can use iText to glue together the XDP XML and the static PDF template, I can serve the PDF directly, which seems to work just fine. Just not sure how to create PDF that route, which is somewhat underwhelmingly documented online.
This behavior is dictated by the user agent (client), and that is how it should remain. Sorry.
One possible solution: use iText to join the data into the PDF, skipping XDP entirely.
What you are looking for is called Adobe Flashpaper:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashpaper/examples/
Otherwise you cannot dictate how the user will view the PDF.