Re: PDF Generation Utilities

  • From: Kerneels Roos <kerneels@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2011 00:02:13 +0200

Hi. The EdSharp PDF version of the Manuel looks fine from the little bit I can see of it, but it's a simple HTML file with no special layout so it should convert well in any tool. By default it also comes up with a hyperlinked menu to the various sections to the left of the page. This menu stays there even when you navigate to a section. My Adobe Reader might be setup to display such a table of contents when available -- I'm not sure -- I mean I'm not sure if the PDF opens up the table of contents automatically or if my reader is just setup to open it if available.


What I do notice, and I've seen this in other PDF files also, is that when I read it there is often times a character left out of a word here and there, with a space between the character and the rest of the word when it is rendered by the synthesizer. Yet, when I move very slowly over the sentence there does not seem to be a space, but spaces are not read so you can't tell.

Anyone know what I can do to resolve this? Is it perhaps a font anti aliasing issue or something? It's very frustrating and even happens in professional documents such as PDF versions of books I baught.

Cheers

On 8/16/2011 1:00 PM, Jamal Mazrui wrote:
Unfortunately, I have not yet found any free or command-line utilities that generate tagged PDFs. If anyone else knows of something, please let us know.

Jamal


On 8/16/2011 6:58 AM, Homme, James wrote:
Hi,
It seems like so many things get put into LaTeX, then into something else. That's why I was asking. Another thing I'm wondering about the PDF conversion utilities out there is whether or not any of them tag PDF for accessibility.

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Jamal Mazrui [mailto:empower@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 6:55 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Homme, James
Subject: Re: PDF Generation Utilities

Definately if you want to do significant work with math or science
material.  For other purposes, other markup languages, such as Markdown,
are probably easier to learn, e.g., as a convenient way of generating
HTML.  In case this helps, a collection of text tutorials on LaTeX is
available at

http://EmpowermentZone.com/latexdoc.zip

Jamal


On 8/16/2011 6:28 AM, Homme, James wrote:
Hi,
Is there much benefit in learning LaTeX?

-----Original Message-----
From: Jamal Mazrui [mailto:empower@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 6:26 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Homme, James
Subject: Re: PDF Generation Utilities

Indeed.  I just reviewed the Pandoc documentation, and one cannot go
directly from HTML to PDF.  One can go from HTML to Markdown, and then
get to PDF with additional help from a MarkdownToPDF utility that is
also included in the distribution.  For that to work, moreover, a LaTeX
distribution has to be installed.

On Windows, I have successfully done this with the LaTeX distribution
available from

http://MikTeX.org

In fact, if one installs that distribution, including the pdflatex
support, EdSharp may be used to convert from Markdown to PDF, after
adding another directory to the search path, e.g.,

c:\program Files\MiKTeX 2.8\miktex\bin

Even one more configuration step is needed, telling MikTex not to prompt
whether to search for additional LaTeX support packages on the net each
time it is run. Off hand, I forget how I set that configuration option.

As a test, I converted the EdSharp manual, EdSharp.htm, to Markdown
format, EdSharp.md, and then to PDF, which I posted at

http://EmpowermentZone.com/EdSharp.pdf

I have no idea how visually acceptable the resulting PDF is.

Jamal

On 8/15/2011 3:49 PM, Homme, James wrote:
Hi,
According to the front page at the site, it can turn HTML into PDF, but I don't see that option in the documentation. I do see MarkDown to PDF. So I guess you could go from HTML to MarkDown, then from MarkDown to PDF.

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Jamal Mazrui [mailto:empower@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 10:59 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Homme, James
Subject: Re: PDF Generation Utilities

The free Pandoc utility can convert from HTML or Markdown to PDF.

http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/

Jamal

On 8/15/2011 8:05 AM, Homme, James wrote:
Hi Don,

Thanks for this info. This sounds and looks like a great utility to work
with PDF. The thing I want to do is work with HTML files, and convert
them to PDF.

Thanks.

Jim

*From:*programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Don Marang
*Sent:* Monday, August 01, 2011 10:50 PM
*To:* programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* Re: PDF Generation Utilities

I am not sure how you plan to send the request to the Linux server or
how to specify more than one web page. What language are you planning to
make this request? Is it for a specific site or a general utility?

In the Ubuntu repository, there is a command line utility to manipulate
and build pdf files. The command and package name are pdftk.

To install, type:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pdftk

Reading the man page will give you some information:

man pdftk

I imagine you could transfer the file from the web site to the server at the beginning of the script using wget, strip out the unwanted links at the as desired (or convert them to bookmarks), and build the pdf file. I
do not know whether it would be easier to send the file back to the
browser computer or just notify when processing is complete. Then it can
present a Save As dialog and download the file from the server.

There are probably many approaches to this problem, this is how I would
approach it.

*Don Marang*
Vinux Software Development Coordinator - vinuxproject.org
<http://www.vinuxproject.org/>
There is just so much stuff in the world that, to me, is devoid of any real substance, value, and content that I just try to make sure that I
am working on things that matter.
-- Dean Kamen


On 7/29/2011 9:53 AM, Homme, James wrote:

Hi,

Here is what I'd like to do.

Send an accessible HTML file to a server that has a utility running on
it that would then spit back a PDF document that I can print. The
utility may need to be fed a collection of HTML documents that it would assemble into a single file to print. I would settle for code libraries
that can work with this stuff. I believe that the server environment
would be your normal Linux/Apache type server, but I need to make sure
of that.

Here is the process flow.

The customer would click a hyperlink in the current HTML file they are
reading.

The utility would do some stuff to make the file look nicer, such as
strip navigational elements to other pages, and whatever else is
necessary to make it look nicer to print.

The HTML file, I suppose, would need to communicate to the utility that
it is a part of a collection of files that the utility needs to get.

The customer would then be directed to that dialog that asks if they
want to download or save the document.

None of this, or as little as possible, must run on the client computer.

Thanks.

Jim

Jim Homme,

Usability Services,

Phone: 412-544-1810.

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--
Kerneels Roos
Cell: +27 (0)82 309 1998
Skype: cornelis.roos

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