Converting Site to PDF: how? how hard?

[robert]

A client of mine wants me to make a web site for them and to also
produce a PDF version of same. What's the best (and easiest) way to do
this? Acrobat? How hard is it to do? (I need to quote him a price on my
time as well)

Thanks!

[jmm-list-gn]

Re: Converting Site to PDF: how? how hard?

robert wrote:[color=blue]
> A client of mine wants me to make a web site for them and to also
> produce a PDF version of same. What's the best (and easiest) way to do
> this? Acrobat? How hard is it to do? (I need to quote him a price on my
> time as well)
>[/color]
If you have Acrobat, you should have an Acrobat printer driver. If not,
you can make one easily enough. Print the page to the Acrobat "printer";
it creates a PDF file as output.
It's a really odd request. What is wrong with making a demo page and
have them look at it with their own browser? Cheaper for both of you.

--
jmm dash list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

[John Bowling]

Re: Converting Site to PDF: how? how hard?

jmm-list-gn wrote:
[color=blue]
> robert wrote:
>[color=green]
>> A client of mine wants me to make a web site for them and to also
>> produce a PDF version of same. What's the best (and easiest) way to do
>> this? Acrobat? How hard is it to do? (I need to quote him a price on
>> my time as well)
>>[/color]
> If you have Acrobat, you should have an Acrobat printer driver. If
> not, you can make one easily enough. Print the page to the Acrobat
> "printer"; it creates a PDF file as output.
> It's a really odd request. What is wrong with making a demo page and
> have them look at it with their own browser? Cheaper for both of you.
>[/color]

OpenOffice can create pdf files for you. Create your web pages, use a
utility (there are several free ones on various download sites) to strip
tags and open that in OpenOffice (also free at
http://www.openoffice.org/ ) then output as pdf. You probably should
practice on a few complete web pages to see how much time it takes.

John

[PeterMcC]

Re: Converting Site to PDF: how? how hard?

John Bowling wrote in
<UOVTc.8057$yh. 4871@fed1read05 >
[color=blue]
> jmm-list-gn wrote:
>[color=green]
>> robert wrote:
>>[color=darkred]
>>> A client of mine wants me to make a web site for them and to also
>>> produce a PDF version of same. What's the best (and easiest) way to
>>> do this? Acrobat? How hard is it to do? (I need to quote him a
>>> price on my time as well)
>>>[/color]
>> If you have Acrobat, you should have an Acrobat printer driver. If
>> not, you can make one easily enough. Print the page to the Acrobat
>> "printer"; it creates a PDF file as output.
>> It's a really odd request. What is wrong with making a demo page
>> and have them look at it with their own browser? Cheaper for both of
>> you.
>>[/color]
>
> OpenOffice can create pdf files for you. Create your web pages, use a
> utility (there are several free ones on various download sites) to
> strip tags and open that in OpenOffice (also free at
> http://www.openoffice.org/ ) then output as pdf. You probably should
> practice on a few complete web pages to see how much time it takes.[/color]

Don't know about OpenOffice but with Acrobat, the longest part of the
process is typing in the filename.

There are two routes with Acrobat and I guess the logical one would be to
use the File > Create PDF > From Web Page which imports the links but I've
had trouble with Adobe getting the CSS positioning badly wrong.

If you can live without the links - or can be bothered to put them in
yourself - my preferred method is to go to the web page and simply "print"
it using the Acrobat driver. Takes seconds.

--
PeterMcC
If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.

[Stephen Poley]

Re: Converting Site to PDF: how? how hard?

On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 18:12:07 -0700, jmm-list-gn
<jmm-list.AXSPAMGN@s ohnen-moe.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>robert wrote:[color=green]
>> A client of mine wants me to make a web site for them and to also
>> produce a PDF version of same. What's the best (and easiest) way to do
>> this? Acrobat? How hard is it to do? (I need to quote him a price on my
>> time as well)
>>[/color]
> If you have Acrobat, you should have an Acrobat printer driver. If not,
>you can make one easily enough. Print the page to the Acrobat "printer";
>it creates a PDF file as output.
> It's a really odd request. What is wrong with making a demo page and
>have them look at it with their own browser? Cheaper for both of you.[/color]

The question is what the client is really asking for - the OP wasn't
very explicit. It *may* be that the client is aware that printed output
from browsers is often mediocre (most of the CSS facilities for paged
media aren't implemented in most browsers) and that he therefore wants a
PDF version which looks good when printed - that could be a
time-consuming process, and I'd hesitate to say what would be the best
route (importing HTML into a DTP package?).

OTOH there aren't many sites where it would be sensible to produce a
separate PDF version of every page - generally it would only be worth
doing for a few pages which the reader is particularly likely to wish to
print out, and where a well laid out printed page is particularly
important for some reason.

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/

[Harlan Messinger]

Re: Converting Site to PDF: how? how hard?


"robert" <robertanthony1 @earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:robertanth ony1-EC0F4F.14583315 082004@news04.e ast.earthlink.n et...[color=blue]
> A client of mine wants me to make a web site for them and to also
> produce a PDF version of same. What's the best (and easiest) way to do
> this? Acrobat? How hard is it to do? (I need to quote him a price on my
> time as well)[/color]

You generally can't convert a web *site* to PDF because a web site is not
usually a linear document running in a single thread from start to finish.
Others have already suggested how to convert web *pages* to PDF.

[Neal]

Re: Converting Site to PDF: how? how hard?

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 14:13:18 -0400, Harlan Messinger
<h.messinger@co mcast.net> wrote:
[color=blue]
>
> "robert" <robertanthony1 @earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:robertanth ony1-EC0F4F.14583315 082004@news04.e ast.earthlink.n et...[color=green]
>> A client of mine wants me to make a web site for them and to also
>> produce a PDF version of same. What's the best (and easiest) way to do
>> this? Acrobat? How hard is it to do? (I need to quote him a price on my
>> time as well)[/color]
>
> You generally can't convert a web *site* to PDF because a web site is not
> usually a linear document running in a single thread from start to
> finish.
> Others have already suggested how to convert web *pages* to PDF.
>[/color]

Though if the site is not too large one could possibly create a huge PDF
and change all links to point to parts of the PDF document. More work than
I care to undertake.

[AES/newspost]

Re: Converting Site to PDF: how? how hard?

In article <prj1i0pcp7cr7o 38anhb825aqm095 7n9vn@4ax.com>,
Stephen Poley <sbpoleySpicedH amTrap@xs4all.n l> wrote:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
> >> A client of mine wants me to make a web site for them and to also
> >> produce a PDF version of same. What's the best (and easiest) way to do
> >> this? Acrobat? How hard is it to do? (I need to quote him a price on my
> >> time as well)[/color][/color][/color]

The "Capture Web Page" capability in Acrobat 5.0 does this beautifully:
type in or copy and paste a URL, it goes to the page, downloads it, and
converts the content to PDF -- and you can tell it to "drill down"
(i.e., follow links from the starting page and capture the resulting
pages also) for as many levels as you like, so there should be no
problem capturing an entire site.

[marathon]

Re: Converting Site to PDF: how? how hard?

On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 18:12:07 -0700, jmm-list-gn in comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html wrote:[color=blue]
>robert wrote:[color=green]
>> A client of mine wants me to make a web site for them and to also
>> produce a PDF version of same. What's the best (and easiest) way to do
>> this? Acrobat? How hard is it to do? (I need to quote him a price on my
>> time as well)
>>[/color]
> If you have Acrobat, you should have an Acrobat printer driver. If not,
>you can make one easily enough. Print the page to the Acrobat "printer";
>it creates a PDF file as output.
> It's a really odd request. What is wrong with making a demo page and
>have them look at it with their own browser? Cheaper for both of you.[/color]

The easiest way is to publish the site, then open Acrobat and use the
web conversion option, which downloads a website and converts to PDF.

In Acrobat 6 it's under the "Advanced" menu/"Web Capture".

--
ATTENTION
This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is
allowed for die experts only! So all the "lefthander s" stay away
and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working
intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked
anderswhere! Also: please keep still and only watchen
astaunished the blinkenlights.

[Fritz M]

Re: Converting Site to PDF: how? how hard?

robert <robertanthony1 @earthlink.net> wrote:
[color=blue]
> A client of mine wants me to make a web site for them and to also
> produce a PDF version of same. What's the best (and easiest) way to do
> this?[/color]

Several libraries are available to generate PDF files on the fly.
PDFlib and clibPDF both are commercial products with a variety of
programming interfaces available. FreelibPDF is open source with
similar functionality, but you must use PHP.

http://www.pdflib.com/ -- PDFlib
http://www.fastio.com/ -- clibPDF
http://www.fpdf.org/ -- FreelibPDF

The way to use these libararies may be to do something like use the
XML source of your web pages and either generate HTML or PDF depending
on the user preference. After your client discovers that their users
overwhelmingly prefer HTML to PDF, they'll pay you to come back to
remove that PDF functionality :-)

There's also HTMLDOC from Easy Software Products which converts HTML
into PDF. ESP provides this under GPL, hoping that you'll pay them for
support. HTMLDOC doesn't doesn't understand CSS.

RFM