RTF to PDF conversion tools

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 LastBoyScout 24 Feb 2021

Hi,

I work with some software that has a requirement to convert RTF files to PDF ones, for various reasons.

Occasionally, these RTF files can be very large (I've got examples up to 1.5Gb) and the conversion takes a very long time, which isn't necessarily unsurprising - apart from the size of the text, some of the documents will have links to external content that needs to be physically merged in*.

What I'm wondering, though, is whether there are alternative tools that are quicker than the 2 we are currently using - does anyone have any experience of such that could give me some feedback?

* - yes, network speeds could be a factor in some cases and there's not much I can do about that, so it's marginal gains elsewhere...

 Rob Exile Ward 24 Feb 2021
In reply to LastBoyScout:

What software are you using and how long does it take? My goto software for jobs like this is usually Access..

OP LastBoyScout 24 Feb 2021
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Yes - might have been useful to add that! The faster of the 2 we are using is an Aspose library - takes about 30 seconds on a 1.5Gb file.

For reasons I won't bore you with, we can't use Access.

Post edited at 13:52
 wintertree 24 Feb 2021
In reply to LastBoyScout:

How much do you care about the precise formatting?  If an RTF can be said to have such a thing...

I’ve done some very shameful things with a combination of Python, open office command line format conversion and MS Word + VBA...

 tallsteve 24 Feb 2021
In reply to LastBoyScout:

Open Office/Libre office read rtf and output to pdf natively without the need for weird printer drivers.  Better still it can be run from the command line in a headless form, ideal for scripts.
https://www.libreoffice.org/

Install Libre Office (its cross platform) and make sure you have the RTF import installed (it may be built in).
Read the top answer to a similar question (for docx to pdf) on the stackoverflow thread:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30349542/command-libreoffice-headless-c...

As for speed ... no idea!

I you're on Linux (or possibly OSX?) then there is a PERL script rtf2pdf.sh that uses swriter executable from above but in an easier way.:
http://www.wolldingwacht.de/progs/rtf2pdf.html


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