zopyx.convert 1.0.2

A Python interface to XSL-FO libraries (Conversion HTML to PDF, RTF, DOCX, WML and ODT)

The zopyx.convert package helps you to convert HTML to PDF, RTF, ODT, DOCX and WML using XSL-FO technology.

Requirements

• Java 1.5.0 or higher

• csstoxslfo (included)

• XFC-4.0 (XMLMind) for ODT, RTF, DOCX and WML support

• XINC 2.0 (Lunasil) for PDF support

• BeautifulSoup

• ElementTree

Installation

• install zopyx.convert either using easy_install or by downloading the sources from the Python Cheeseshop

• the environment variable $XFC_DIR must be set and point to the root of your XFC installation directory

• the environment variable $XINC_HOME must be set and to point to the root of your XINC installation directory

Subversion repository

• http://svn-public.zopyx.com/viewvc/python-projects/zopyx.convert/trunk/

Usage

Some examples from the Python command-line:

from zopyx.convert import Converter
C = Convert('/path/to/some/file.html')
pdf_filename = C('pdf')
rtf_filename = C('rtf')
pdt_filename = C('odt')
wml_filename = C('wml')
docx_filename = C('docx')

A very simple command-line converter is also available:

xslfo-convert --format rtf --output foo.rtf sample.html

How zopyx.convert works internally

• The source HTML file is converted to XHTML using mxTidy

• the XHTML file is converted to FO using the great “csstoxslfo” converter written by Werner Donne.

• the FO file is passed either to the external XINC or XFC converter to generated the desired output format

• all converters are based on Java technology make the conversion solution highly portable across operating system (including Windows)

Limitations

zopyx.convert works currently only on Linux/Unix, no Windows support so far

Why XINC/XFC and not FOP?

zopyx.convert is build on the commercial converters XINC/XFC because these converters just work. Depending on your needs to must make your choice between the several available additions. Why not Apache FOP? FOP has been evaluated in 2004 for the conversion to RTF/PDF and it was pretty much unusable at that time. Now in 2007 Apache FOP reached version 0.9.3 thinks are looking better. However open formats like ODT (Open-Office) and DOCX (Microsoft Office 2007) have come up and need to be supported. XFC fills the gap by supporting RTF, ODT, DOCX and WML.

Author

zopyx.convert was written by Andreas Jung for ZOPYX Ltd. & Co. KG, Tuebingen, Germany.

License

zopyx.convert is published under the Lesser GNU Public License V 2.1 (LGPL 2.1). See LICENSE.txt.

Contact

ZOPYX Ltd. & Co. KG

c/o Andreas Jung,

Charlottenstr. 37/1

D-72070 Tuebingen, Germany

E-mail: info at zopyx dot com

Web: http://www.zopyx.com

Changes:

1.0.2 (03.10.2007)

• bugfix

1.0.1 (03.10.2007)

• added –test option to command-line frontend

1.0.0 (30.09.2007)

• update to css2xslfo V 1.5.0

• official 1.0.0 release

0.5.0 (09.09.2007)

• replaced mxTidy related code with the BeautifulSoup module (no longer requires any compiling)

• html2fo checks the existence of images

0.4.9 (25.07.2007)

• support for utidy lib (which is the preferred tidy library). Using mx.Tidy only as fallback

0.4.8 (unreleased)

• unreleased

0.4.7 (08.07.2007)

• reSTified documentation

0.4.6 (08.07.2007)

• fixes in availableFormats()

0.4.5 (07.07.2007)

• various FO fixes

0.4.4 (06.07.2007)

• using logging module

0.4.3 (05.07.2007)

• html2fo: using ElementTree for most FO modifications

0.4.2 (30.06.2007)

• converting page-break-after: always back into break-after: page

0.4.1 (24.06.2007)

• various fixes

0.4.0 (24.06.2007)

• added zope interfaces

• converters are now classes

• added unittests

0.3.1 (18.06.2007)

• html2fo() and the converter constructor got a new ‘encoding’ parameter in order to specify the input encoding of the HTML file. This parameter will be passed down to Tidy in order to perform a proper conversion of non-ascii characters.

0.3.0 (unreleased)

• using subprocess module of Python

• new Convert() class for high-level XSLFO access

• logger added

• better checks for XINC, XFC

• updated documentation

0.2.0 (16.06.2007)

• PDF support added

• command line interface added

• mxTidy integration

0.1.0 (16.06.2007)

• initial release