Question

Batch PDF Generation

Asked by: lesterawilson3

Looking to develop a batch process that will, on a nightly basis, generate PDF files from several hundred flat text files (all named current.xrp - the extension is meaningless - it's a text file, however each file is different an in a different subdirectory), name the PDF file something like report.pdf, and save it in the same subdirectory as the source text file.  Then repeat the process the next night - take the latest current.xrp file generated by the system, PDF it and overwrite the current report.pdf file... repeat process each night.

The flat text files were really designed with a 132 column impact printer on green-bar paper - so most reports are in a landscape format.  

I have a developer coming in to assist - but looking for other ideas / angles / success stories.

The goal of the project is to develop a reporting menu where reports can be viewed/printed from a web browser.  Looking to make things as simple as possible for the end-user - all they have to do is point and click - no configuration other than having Acrobat Reader on their PC's.  

Thanks.

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Asked On
2008-01-15 at 13:03:51ID23085338
Tags

Batch PDF generation

Topics

Adobe Acrobat

,

Miscellaneous Programming

,

Windows Batch Scripting

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
16

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Answers

 

by: gatorvipPosted on 2008-01-15 at 13:42:09ID: 20666990

Just for clarification... you want to create a batch file that contains code to the effect of
(where convert is the conversion application, from txt to pdf, into which you feed 2 parameters, source and destination)

convert subdir1\current.xrp subdir1\report.pdf
convert subdir2\current.xrp subdir2\report.pdf
convert subdir3\current.xrp subdir3\report.pdf
...
convert subdirn\current.xrp subdirn\report.pdf

                                              
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: lesterawilson3Posted on 2008-01-15 at 13:47:56ID: 20667048

Yes... however we're looking at a couple hundred folders and a couple thousand instances of current.xrp

Was looking more along the line of a process that would do a search for all files named current.xrp then do a convert to report.pdf, and save it to the same subdirectory as the source current.xrp file.  

This way if there are any changes to the directory structure, we don't have to edit the script to account for that change.

Hope this clarifies my intentions.  

Thanks!

 

by: gatorvipPosted on 2008-01-15 at 13:58:08ID: 20667156

>>Was looking more along the line of a process that would do a search for all files named current.xrp then do a convert to report.pdf, and save it to the same subdirectory as the source current.xrp file.  

If you already have the txt->pdf converter then the problem is fairly simple, imho.

Some simple pseudocode for a programmatic approach (which you can call via a batch file). You can implement this rather easily in the language of your choice:

procedure batch_convert(input: rootDirectory, inputFileName, outputFileName; output: none)
1. start with rootDirectory
2. if it contains the file inputFileName,  then call the txt-> pdf converter via API
3. repeat process for subdirectories until all are exhausted

If you don't have the converter necessary then it's a whole different story

 

by: lesterawilson3Posted on 2008-01-15 at 14:12:25ID: 20667254

There's a few command line TXT>PDF converters out there that'll do the trick... but this helps me in the right direction.  I presume we're looking at a custom job here - nothing off the shelf??

 

by: mikelfritzPosted on 2008-01-15 at 20:25:25ID: 20669226

Wow,  this would be easy in Unix/Linux.  

You could run cygwin (to emulate linux in windows) and ghostscript or something even less spectacular since it's only text for the pdf bit.  And then use the find command with the exec switch and TA-DA!

 

by: mikelfritzPosted on 2008-01-15 at 20:39:14ID: 20669267

I think Omnipage still has this functionality built in.  It has/had a batch convert with a scheduler and lots of options.  I tried it with limitted success (it took way too long) but I was converting thousands of multi-megabyte TIFF files in the batch.  It was taking about 3 min per 5 meg file.  Text to pdf was lightning fast though.

Wow - I just looked at the price - $499.00!  Outrageous. Try e-bay.  I used it at version 11 and it worked fine for text.

 

by: mikelfritzPosted on 2008-01-15 at 21:07:20ID: 20669362

OK - I found it.

program txt2pdf  - get the binary for windows.

At the base directory do (of course you can batch this):
###############################################
dir /s/b *.txt > convert.scr
\PATHNAME\txt2pdf -list convert.scr
###############################################

The first line creates a text file with a list of all of the text files
the last line tells txt2pdf to read the file and convert all of the files in the list
there may be a way to pass the dir /s/b *.txt directly to txt2pdf but I have not tried

Get it here:
http://www.sanface.com/txt2pdf.html#download

 

by: mikelfritzPosted on 2008-01-16 at 08:16:53ID: 20673153

sorry - the script should be this for you:

###############################################
dir /s/b current.xrp  > convert.scr
\PATHNAME\txt2pdf -list convert.scr
###############################################

 

by: jltoopsPosted on 2008-01-16 at 11:45:23ID: 20675324

The actual problem is the Converter itself .. we have tried a couple but the pagenation doesn't come out right.

the problem is with the 132 column breen bar

 

by: jltoopsPosted on 2008-01-16 at 11:46:00ID: 20675333

excuse me thats 132 Column GREEN bar

 

by: jltoopsPosted on 2008-01-16 at 12:21:23ID: 20675667

The Sanface one doesn't work because it ignores that the output is formatted for wide carriage printing
so the pagination and the lines are all messed up.

 

by: mikelfritzPosted on 2008-01-16 at 12:37:37ID: 20675820

Edit the txt2pdf.cfg in the install directory file and put in:

paper : legal
landscape : 1

That will get it to do what you want

 

by: mikelfritzPosted on 2008-01-16 at 13:02:19ID: 20676086

No it wont - the pagination will get screwed up.

 

by: mikelfritzPosted on 2008-01-16 at 13:50:32ID: 20676553

in the txt2pdf.cfg file:

paper : ledger
lines : 66
pointsize : 12
vertspace :11

I created a text file 132 accross by 67 down (greenbar is 66)
It created a pdf that looks OK 132 across by 66 down on first page and 1 line of 132 accross on the second.

I also see that you can use a recursive switch but it won't work for me - must be syntaxt

 

by: mikelfritzPosted on 2008-01-20 at 20:32:56ID: 20703904

Any progress?

 

by: lesterawilson3Posted on 2008-01-21 at 07:41:04ID: 20706775

Yes...

Actually - instead of batch converting 1,000's of files every night - we decided to convert to PDF on demand instead using the AdultPDF conversion utility.  

Simply map the text file extension to the following batch file.  Works like a charm!  

C:\xrp2pdf\\test\txttopdf -pfs9 -pot -plm16 -prm16 -ptm16 -pbm16 -oao %1

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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