Linbox Converter

 
Conversion of MS-Office files on any platform
 
 
Linbox-Converter converts MS-Office documents (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) to PDF, PostScript, text, HTML, RTF, and TIFF.
 
Linbox-Converter is published under GPL license on the Adullact website .
 
Linbox-Converter is a client/server application written in Python language.
The client transfers to the server the MS-Office documents to convert. The server does the conversion into the requested file type (PDF, PostScript, HTML, text, RTF, or TIFF) and send back the result to the client.
 
 
The PDF file that results from the conversion is exactly the same as the output printed by MS-Office. Furthermore, the PDF file can be printed by the client and the result will be the same as if the printing was done with MS-Office on Windows.
 
 

1. Linbox-Converter usage areas

• With the Linbox Converter one can visualize MS-Office files attached to their mail on machines working on Unix, GNU/Linux or Windows ;
• Linbox Converter is an excellent OpenOffice.org complement because it allows - in cases when Open Office does not succeed in reading an MS-Office document - to visualize it and print it perfectly from a computer on which MS-Office is not installed ;
• Make automatic treatments on MS-Office files (automatic conversion to PDF for publication on the web or archiving in a perenial open format, indexing for research after text conversion, ...) ;
• Linbox Converter makes a company conversion project, from MS-Office to OpenOffice.org much easier. A batch program will run through a whole directory, convert all MS-Office documents into GIF type files, then load the MS-Office files into OpenOffice.org, print them, and finally convert them into GIF. One can then compare both documents (MS-Office and OpenOffice.org outputs) side by side on a Web page ;
• Easily integrate MS-Office files into Content Management Systems. One can change the lay-out thanks to navigation tools, so as to turn them into HTML pages.

 
 
To make a long story short, Linbox-Converter favours the interoperability.
 
 

2. Technical description

 
The system is made of two parts :

• a client software installed on workstations ;
• a server on a Windows XP/2000/NT PC.

 

2.1. Client

The client software ensures :

• the transmission to the server of the original file ;
• the reception of the PDF file ;
• the posting of the file by a PDF visualisator (for example Acroread) or the storage in a file (PDF, PostScript, HTML, text or TIFF).

 
The client can also deal with zip files that contains few files to convert.
 
The program is available in a version :

• with command lines that allow to send batch conversions ;
• that is integrated to Netscape/Mozilla and allows, for example, the posting of PDF directly in the Acrobat Reader plugin of the navigator.

 
 
The client software is written in Python . It functions therefore on all operating systems on which Python is available.
Remarq: For Solaris, Irix and HP-UX systems, Python is provided by Linbox FAS in our Free Software distribution .
 
 
 

2.2. Server

The software on the server ensures :

• reception of files to convert ;
• creation of temporary files ;
• opening of the temporary file in the corresponding MS-Office application ;
• printing of the MS-Office file in a postscript file ;
• conversion from postscript to PDF (text, RTF, HTML or TIFF) ;
• transfer of the PDF file (text, RTF, HTML or TIFF) back to the workstation that sent the original file.

 
 
The server software is also written in Python and multithreaded. This means that the server can convert few files at the same time. The control of MS-Office applications is made via COM. The conversion between PostScript and PDF is made thanks to a free software called GNU Ghostscript .
 
The server software works on Windows NT/2000/XP. For MS-Office, the version that has been heavily tested is MS-Office 2000 Premium.  MS-Word and Powerpoint conversions work well with other versions like MS-Office XP or MS-Office 2003, but Excel is not supported on these versions.
 
 
 

3. Services around Linbox-Converter

 
Linbox FAS can install and do some support around the Linbox-Converter.
 
We can add new features on demand.
We'd like to thank Renault S.A. who payed for a big part of the development of this software.
 
Beyond the possible extensions, the open structure of the Linbox-Converter  makes it possible to plan to apply the method to any type of files. We can imagine for example that CAD files be automatically converted into GIF or TIFF in such a way that they can be seen from a Web site.
 
For more informations on services, contact us .