From: Austin Ziegler Date: 2006-10-31T02:27:39+09:00 Subject: Re: PDF-writer and MS word document On 10/30/06, Li Chen wrote: > CatLady [] wrote: > > You might want have to write some sort of a macro or script file which > > opens up word, dumps the document to text so you can do your conversion. > > > > An easier approach would be to use a PDF print driver. > Do you know which is most popular and compatible with in Ruby? You're not looking for something to run from Ruby. You're looking for a program that understands the (proprietary) Microsoft Word format and can write the (semi-open) PDF format. The absolute best way to do this is to open the document in Word and print it through Acrobat. Lesser ways include opening the document in OpenOffice and exporting it as a PDF. Alternatively, you can try something like PDFCamp (works on Windows): http://www.verypdf.com/pdfcamp/pdf-writer/word-to-acrobat.html You might be able to use http://www.pdfonline.com/ to convert, but I'm not sure they'd want you doing a third-party conversion in your own application. Or maybe http://www.primopdf.com/ if you want to consider that. Or http://www.convertzone.com/doc2pdf/help.htm. Or try FastPDF: http://www.fastpdf.com/. PDF::Writer will never have this capability directly, and even if someone were to create a Word document parser, it is unlikely that formatting would be preserved exactly. It might be more likely to see a PostScript parser, but even that is unlikely. -austin -- Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/ * austin@halostatue.ca * http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/ * austin@zieglers.ca