Re: HTML to PDF

Yann:

Printing out PDF's on the fly is one of those Yes and No type answers and in
this case, it's going to be mostly No!!

While it is true that Adobe has a web site that allows you to convert a file
to PDF, the results are often unpredictable. Especially so with something
like a HTML file.

The "Full" Acrobat package installs a driver on your computer that allows
you to save "most" word processing and graphics files as a PDF. In theory,
you would then make this file available on your web page for downloading.
Much as you would a .doc file from a Word document.

This PDF file would normally be created in some program OTHER than a HTML
editor. (We use Canvas to create ours.) This PDF file then contains all the
formatting and fonts needed for the final client to reproduce the page or
file in Acrobat Reader. They WILL have to have the free reader on their
machine to open it or print it.

So--unless you had already created the file--converted it into PDF and
placed a link to it on your page--the viewer would have to know how to do
all this.

Don't get me wrong. PDF is a great way to distribute pages in the format you
want then to be. You see examples all over the place at Government and other
web sites. For example, the "1040" at the IRS website looks just like the
one you would get in the mail.

But--if you don't have Canvas or some other program with the PDF engine
built in--then the best thing would be to purchase the complete Acrobat
package.

Best wishes
Ted Temer
Temercraft Designs Redding, CA
temer(at)c-zone.net
www.temercraft.com/novels/
www.newsredding.com/
www.ramac-rc.org/


> Hello every one,
>
> I have a customer that want to gather information from a database and then
> be able to print it out perfectly, respecting margins, fonts and sizes.
> All that on-the-fly, through the web site.
>
> The perfect solution will be to transform this HTML page into a PDF file.
> I have heard that it's possible to do it on the fly.
> Anybody have any information about that?
> Thank you,
> Yann
>
>
>

HTML: hwg-basics mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA