Convert docx to postscript

Question

I need to convert a Word document (docx) to a postscript file so that I can use this postscript file to generate PDF using the Ghostscript command line tool.

How do I generate the postscript file from the docx?

I need to code using .NET/C#. I found about LaTeX which generates postscript but how do I make my Word file be used with LaTeX or any other tool to get the postscript generated?

Answer 1

There are three main products I will mention that understand DOCX.

The obvious one is MS Word. It produces the definitive rendering of all DOCX files. Nothing is ever going to be exactly the same. By definition it is always correct. However it is not really designed for automated conversion and getting it to do this kind of thing is fraught with difficulty. On a legal level the EULA may confict with your chosen solution.

OpenOffice.org is a great product. The EULA is much more accomodating. The freeness is attractive. However, while it will produce a pretty good output for most DOCX documents it does not for all. While it is similar to MS Word it is not the same and this is something you may notice, particularly for more complex documents. Probably more importantly, again it's not designed for automated conversions and trying to get it to do this can be fraught and tiresome.

WordGlue .NET (on which I work) is a native .NET library that understands DOCX. It is designed specifically to produce output which is the same as MS Word. While I'm not going to say it is perfect (it's a big task) it is superior to OpenOffice.org in that it does actually attempt this as a specfic design decision. However probably the biggest advantage is that it is designed for high perfomance multi-threaded server side conversion. It's native .NET and thus low impact in terms of security.

Products like ABCpdf (on which I work) will integrate with these three applicatons to allow conversion direct to PDF. Why bother going via PostScript if you want PDF? However if you really want to save as PostScript you can do that too.

Or indeed you can write your own code to integrate with these products. Just be aware of the caveats above regarding fraughtness and tiresomeness relating to MS Office and OpenOffice.org. To get these things working unattended requires an awful lot of attention.

Answer 2

You need to print it to a PostScript file, from an application which can read .docx files. Or you could just export direct to PDf from the app, as far as I know anything which reads .docx and can print, can also write a PDF file.

Answer 3

If you have a windows computer you can use the commandline

"%ProgramFiles%\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe" /pt foobaar.docx "printerThatDumpsPS"

You can find file printers for postscript printing for free on the internet. Or if you have adobe pfdf, pdf exchange or any PS printer. You can use c# to temporarily set the printers settings so that it does this for you.

So for example using pdf exchange as follows,

"%ProgramFiles%\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe" /pt foobaar.docx "PDF-XChange Printer 2012"

Produces a pdf file without much of a trace anywhere what program was used, assuming pdf exchange was set to save file without asking.

This produces a passable document but yeah it looses quiet many features. But it might be enough.