RTF to PDF (was Re: jade/jadetex with tables (was: & 2 questions))

[Ron Ross <ronross@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 21 May 1999, jfitzpatrick@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> From: Joerg Wittenberger <Joerg.Wittenberger@xxxxxxxxx>
> 
>> **********************************************************************
>> * Anyway using the rtf backend would be an option as well.  Is there *
>> * any command line converter from rtf to postscript or pdf?          *
>> **********************************************************************
[...]
> But I could find nothing that faithfully converted RTF to page
> description language except for MS Word on Windows. I ended up building
> a little Windows server in Perl which runs Jade and processes the RTF
> through Word using OLE, and returns Postscript back to Unix (it will
> also return RTF with the images embedded :) . The addition of Adobe
> Acrobat (not the free version unfortunately) now provides a PDF option
> on my server. Acrobat actually gives you two PDF options: 1) a printer
> driver that will produce PDF directly from any Windows app (PDFWriter);
> and 2) conversion of Postscript (Distiller) to PDF. 

You might also want to check out Corel Office 2000 (aka WordPerfect 9). It
can write PDF files directly. I haven't tried it yet, and I hear that the
PDF filter is a little buggy; but this could change very soon, with the
next service patch, as the PDF filter in Corel Draw 9, also just out and
which I do have, is phenomenal. And WP can of course read RTF files, so
the process could be automated. I don't know about WP either reading or
writing straight PostScript, though.

Ron

> PDFWriter is faster, and Distiller is more feature-rich, though either
> produces reasonably compact PDF. The problem is that Acrobat only works
> with native Word files, not RTF, otherwise you might be able to run the
> Unix version directly.


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