Making PDFs Dynamically

C

Chris Lieb

Hello,

Does anyone know if there are any IIS components out there that run on
IIS 5.0 that will convert LaTeX to PDF? I have written a script in ASP
that produces the LaTeX document, but am unsure of how to go about
converting it to PDF and delivering it to the client.

If you don't know of one, do you have any idea of how I might implement
such a transform? I would have to use a WshShell to run pdflatex on
the source twice before I could deliver the PDF to the user. However,
pdflatex outputs a PDF, so I would have to redirect the client to the
PDF, and then somehow come along later and clean it up. I'm not sure
if this would be the optimal process to take.

Any help is much appreciated.

Chris
 
C

Chris Lieb

Thanks, but I don't have any money allocated for this project, so all
of the componenets on that page are ruled out. I won't be able to get
the free license for ABCpdf because this is for an internal website.

When transforming the source to PDF, the jobs have to be run serially
because some features that are in the LaTeX require a second run
through the program to be implemented. For instance, the first time
through, the program records how many pages of output are produced.
The second time through, it puts that number in the document.

Right now I am having a little trouble getting the program to run
through an ASP script. It always hangs on me. I am considering
writing straight PDF (not looking like fun) if this doesn't work out.

Chris
 
C

Chris Hohmann

Chris Lieb said:
Hello,

Does anyone know if there are any IIS components out there that run on
IIS 5.0 that will convert LaTeX to PDF? I have written a script in ASP
that produces the LaTeX document, but am unsure of how to go about
converting it to PDF and delivering it to the client.

If you don't know of one, do you have any idea of how I might implement
such a transform? I would have to use a WshShell to run pdflatex on
the source twice before I could deliver the PDF to the user. However,
pdflatex outputs a PDF, so I would have to redirect the client to the
PDF, and then somehow come along later and clean it up. I'm not sure
if this would be the optimal process to take.

Any help is much appreciated.

Chris

Are you using MiKTeX? If so it comes with pdfTeX. Here's the documentation:
http://www.miktex.org/manual/pdftex.html

pdfTeX also available separately here:
http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/
 
C

Chris Lieb

That is the solution that I ended up setteling on. The hardest part
was to get ASP to execute pdfLaTeX without hanging. My boss was
starting to get mad at me for having the development server rebooted so
many times to make ASP work again. Ends up that you have to use a
bunch of command line switches to get it to cooperate with ASP so that
the page is displayed without the page load timing out, even when there
is an error in the document creation.

Chris
 
C

Chris Hohmann

Chris Lieb said:
That is the solution that I ended up setteling on. The hardest part
was to get ASP to execute pdfLaTeX without hanging. My boss was
starting to get mad at me for having the development server rebooted so
many times to make ASP work again. Ends up that you have to use a
bunch of command line switches to get it to cooperate with ASP so that
the page is displayed without the page load timing out, even when there
is an error in the document creation.

Chris

You may be interested in an open-source project called PDFCreator. It may be
more stable and/or more efficient at generating PDF files. I have no
first-hand experience with the program, but a colleague of mine recommends
it highly. Here's a link:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
 
C

Chris Lieb

Chris said:
That is the solution that I ended up setteling on. The hardest part
was to get ASP to execute pdfLaTeX without hanging. My boss was
starting to get mad at me for having the development server rebooted so
many times to make ASP work again. Ends up that you have to use a
bunch of command line switches to get it to cooperate with ASP so that
the page is displayed without the page load timing out, even when there
is an error in the document creation.

Well, I was bored today, so I went ahead and made an ASP component to
take care of the process for me. I must admit that it is rather
primitive, but it fits my needs very well. If you are interested in
trying it out, go ahead and say so and I will send you the DLL along
with the source and supporting files. It requires an installation of
MiKTeX on your computer, but it could be easily extended to handle
another distribution. If you do make changes, please notify me since I
might find the modifications useful.

Chris Lieb
 

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