Converting HTML/XLS/CSV files to .ps?

[2002 JI Open Discussion]

By: Anuradha - anura

Converting HTML/XLS/CSV files to .ps?

2003-10-27 03:22

Hi,

Cud u plzz tell me whether it'ss possible to convert .html, .xls and .csv files to .ps format when i use Jasper in Unix?

B'cos for converting .pdf to .ps, we can use ghostscript software. Is there a similar software for converting others to .ps?

Plzz help me out.

 

Regards,

anu.

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By: Fred Welland - fwelland

RE: Converting HTML/XLS/CSV files to .ps?

2003-10-27 07:03

For a non-Jasper part of my project I user htmldoc to convert html to Postscript. You can find that at http://www.easysw.com/htmldoc/

 

The is also html2ps which can be found at http://user.it.uu.se/~jan/html2ps.html

 

You can also try to get Mozilla and Netscape to work with a Xvfb to 'render' a html page and the print it.

 

Don't know about CSV - but I'd probably convert it to HTML first and then go to PS or something like that.

 

For XLS files - I think that is trickier. There are a few tool kits for this sort of thing that seem to all be based on rendering an onscreen image and then converting that PS. These can be server base solution too (i.e. headless). Loosely speaking these sorts of things tool are often called imaging toolkits (i.e. get an 'image' of a document) and/or printing toolkiet (i.e. image a document and then print it to a file).

 

Here are some links that may be relevant:

 

http://dataconv.org/apps_office.html

http://www.blueberry.com/

http://www.keypak.com/

OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org) can be run and automate in a fashion to open XLS and doc files and print them to PS.

http://www.w3.org/Tools/Word_proc_filters.html

http://www.softinterface.com/index.htm

http://wvware.sourceforge.net/

http://www.stellent.com/

 

FYI: This (converting PC file formats to PS (and tiff)) is a common problem for UNIX fax servers. Very ofter the solution is to have a Win32 base 'Imaging Server' that has Excell, Word, etc. The image server's purpose is to load, for example, an excell file in excell, and print it to a postscrpt (or tiff) print to file driver; and then send it back to the fax server to faxing.