converting documents on server to PDF?

[arianhojat]

you know how Adobe Professional($$$) or Cutepdf(free) on windows have abilities to convert any document that can be printed into pdf via print dialog box?

I was looking to do something similar in that, I want to be able to convert any document on the server into pdf. A program like those is only idea i could come up with. Any pdf open source stuff i found seems to be for converting dynamic text(like XML/XSL-FO) to pdf, not 'already-made' files in different formats.
So I want to be able specify a word .doc, .txt file, etc. on command line, and have option to save it as pdf with specified filename parameter.

Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.

[papaface]

http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pdf.php

[Psycho]

Am I missing something? Why are you asking this in a PHP forum? (BTW: The PDF library in PHP does not convert documents. It is used for creating PDFs on the fly).

Here are some products that may help.

http://www.activepdf.com/products/serverproducts/docconverter/index.cfm ($$$)

http://www.pdf-convert.com/purchase.htm ($$$)

http://www.doc2pdf.net/ (free - only .doc)

[arianhojat]

hello mjdamato,
because I am uploading the documents via php, and when the Upload is complete i wantde to convert to docs. i assumed it would be best to try natively within php to attempt it.

hey devnerds,
thanks for posting the link to php manual ... however if you simply look at the examples to free solutions like that,
like PDF_show($p, "Hello world!");...  this is dynamic text/PDF creation. not taking an already made document and converting it.

[arianhojat]

I'd prefer open source solution or at least one that can run on linux.
none of those paying ones seem to do it. activePDF looked the most promisign sicne it did many formats, but is Windows solution

this looks like an idea maybe like this would work which does some wacky stuff with postscript/Ghostscript? (i beleive thats how CutePDF works)...
http://www.ps2pdf.com/convert/index.htm

but not sure how to set it up for my own server. like how to make a word file into postscript, and then to pdf.

[Psycho]

Well, I think you'll be hard pressed to find any free package that can convert many different file types. The problem is that if you are going to convert documents w/o printing them from their native application, thent he converter must have it's own "viewer" for rendering each file type.

We used one of the ActivePDF products at my previous company for distilling programatic postscript files into production ready pdfs for the commercial printing industry. It had great performance for the minimal cost (compared to Adobe's enterprise solution).

[arianhojat]

I did find a way to do Excel/Doc/'Office' files into PDF via Open Office macro on command line.

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2006/01/11/from-microsoft-to-openoffice.html?page=2