HTML2PDF Conversion

Question

We're developing software for both Linux and Windows that requires CVS files to be generated into PDF reports. I've written a program in C to turn the CVS files into HTML files (td, tr etc.) and am then converting the HTML into PS using html2ps and then ps2pdf under Linux.

However as mentioned above we're also developing for Windows and while I'm aware that html2ps and ps2pdf are available under Windows they have a few dependencies which are going to cause headaches for our clients (namely Perl and Ghostscript). Are there any native Windows console applications that will convert HTML into PDF that can be distributed as single executable files with no major dependencies?

Solution 1

I would like to add a new entry that I've used recently - wkhtmltopdf - it is an open source project that uses webkit to render, which means that it has all the latest and greatest available including CSS3, SVG, and can even let javascript run before creating the pdf. It doesn't have the same level of polish as princeXML, but its the best FOSS solution I've found.

I haven't used it for multi-page documents yet, but I believe it does have support for css page-breaks.

Solution 2

I've used Prince XML with Java and it is extremely powerful and easy to use, but it's also commercial.

Solution 3

I've used ExpertPDF's Html2Pdf converter component. Easy to make .NET app to convert.

Solution 4

Check Pisa. Its completely written in python so should work on Windows and Unix. The license is GPL but commercial license is also available.

Solution 5

I had lots of luck with HTMLDOC. It is open source and available on many platforms and has a commercial version if you want to pay for it.

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Comments

[keithwill]

I've used prince as well. It worked very well for our in-house stuff. It's output had very good visual parity with the original HTML page. Shame there isn't an open source equivilent.