Hi,
I am evaluating Aspose.pdf & Aspose.Word for one of our products.
What we need to do is to convert word documents into Aspose.pdf.xml format & then fill up that xml with data & load & convert this xml to pdf file.
It seems from the API's that I should be able to do the same. But I have a few queries.
1. Will this procedure be 100% compatible with word formatting,i.e. will the generated pdf document look exactly like actual word document? If not, can u give me a detailed document on what word formattings/options are not supported?
2. I have gone through your blogs & have seen that you had some problems with right-to-left languages, which you planned to fix by 20th Aug. Has it been done already & is it included in the current release. Is is extermely important for us to be able to support UNICODE completely including languages like Arabic,Hebrew, Chineese, Japaneese, Korean etc.
3. Another issue is to be able to specify printer tray selection in the document. I have gone through you XML schema & seen that printer tray selecion for sections (avilable in word) is not exposed in the XML. Is it possible for you to include the same so that printer tray control in embedded in the final pdf document? This is important because actual printing is typically outsourced to printing centers which is typically outside our control.
4. Do you have any plans to support actual printing of PDF documents?
5. Another issue is the performance. What I need is some performance benchmark for converting from Aspose.pdf.xml to actual pdf document. The documents are pretty complex - around 8 - 10 pages, includes 8 - 10 different Unicode fonts, atleast two different languages (e.g. english & arabic), more than 70% of the document is in 5 column tables printed in 2-up format in small fonts (8 or less), there will be atleast 7-8 such tables. The document will also contain 5-6 images (avg size 5cm X 5cm ). It will also contain different page headers & footers in different parts (at leaset 2-3) of the document. Can u please give me some benchmark on documnts/hour along with necessary hardware configuration for this kind of documents?
Regards,
Dinabandhu
1. Aspose.Pdf can't 100% compatiable with Word formatting. As you know, MS Word is so poweful and we can't support all features in PDF. And it's not easy for me to enumerate which formattings are supported and which are not. I can only say we support most commonly used formattings. We are now working to make Word2Pdf works better. You can have a test for your document and if you are not satisfied, we can give you some advice as workaround.
2. Right-to-Left language is not supported but not all font supported. Some special truetype fonts for Arabic and Hebrew are not supported. You can only use commonly used truetype fonts such as Times. Chinese,Japanese and Korean is supported.
3. I have not found printer tray support for PDF in the PDF reference. Adoobe reader uses page size to select printer tray. I need to study deeper into this issue to get to know if it's possible to support it. If you know more about it (for example, is there a product support this), can you please tell me?
4. We are planing to support actual printing of PDF documents. But we can't implement it in 3 months. We are not working to implement a real PDF reader which is the base work for the PDF printer.
5. Performance is different largely according to the document format and hardware. As for the document you described, the performance is about 500 - 1200 documents per hour with 1GHZ CPU and 512M memory.
Hi,
I am not sure whether tray selection is part of pdf or not,though postscript has support for tray selection using setpagedevice.
But, there are third party tools/controls that provide tray selection,e.g, look at “3-Heights? PDF Printer API” from
http://www.pdf-tools.com/shop/products.asp?pcid=PRNA&lang=en
Also, another problem is that the pdf is not exposed as collection of pages, i.e. I couldn’t find a way to access individual pages of the document. This is important to put page specific contents, e.g OMR marks for sorting machines. Is there a way to do it?
Regards,
Dinabandhu
Dear Dinabandhu,
Thanks for the information about printer tray.
Yes the pdf is not exposed as collection of pages in the current product. We have noted the requirement of accessing individual page of document. We are now working on a new product Aspose.Pdf.Kit which can handle this. This product hopes to be available at the end of this year.
Dear Dinabandhu,
Thank you for considering Aspose.
Maybe I have misconceived what your mean. Aspose.Pdf.Kit is used to handle existing PDF document. If you want to add page specific contents when generating PDF, Aspose.Pdf can support it at a certain extent. You can start a new page by setting IsInNewPage. And you can added contents using Custom positioning. I can give you some advice on detail if you elaborate your requirement.