Etalon - Generate Money for Free

Generate PDF Files for Nothing

By Mike Gunderloy Friday, February 08, 2002 Ever needed to generate a PDF file, but don't have the full Acrobat software? There are alternatives. One of these is HTMLDOC, from Easy Software Products. This product takes as its input an HTML file (or set of HTML files) and generates as output either PostScript or PDF files. I tested it on some files from Microsoft Word. The two-step process (Word to HTML, HTML to PDF) isn't something I'd want to do every day, but it worked fine. And although the program has one of the worst user interfaces I've seen in a good long while, the price is right: it can do this conversion for free, while the full Acrobat package is currently running $220 over at PC Connection. I can put up with the GUI to save that sort of money for my occasional PDF needs. Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.

ESP has an interesting model for making money off of this product. It's under the Gnu Public License (GPL), which means that you can download the full source code for free. Alternatively, you can get a precompiled Windows executable that lacks some features (notably, the ability to run the program in batch mode on a web server). Or you can pay money for a full-featured and supported executable version. While compiling your own seems like an attractive path, be prepared for some extra effort. First, you'll also need to download and compile the FLTK GUI toolkit. I gave up at the point where it became obvious that I'd need to compile SSL support as well. If I ever need the web support, I'll pay for it.

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