PDF to HTML5 conversion

We have been working on a secret project since early 2010. We already have a great Java library for printing, viewing, and rasterizing PDF files. How difficult would it be to create a new version which can convert PDF to HTML?

The advent of Mobile devices and the maturity of HTML specification has made it much more feasible and advantageous. HTML 5 offers a canvas, Javascript, and decent feature set to handle PDF content. PDF is a great file format for display but the viewers are not great on mobile platforms.

Java does not run on Apple’s IPad/iPhone, and Android does not support several critical Java features. So porting our Java PDF viewer to either platform would be a huge amount of work. It is also not clear which platform will win and whether there is a commercial market.

PDF to HTML conversion makes a great deal of sense for our customers who face the same issue – they can make content available on multiple platforms easily and do not have to pick which they think will win. So we have taken our Java parser and built a new product to generate HTML.

The full details and access to the software can be found on our website.

We are publishing lots of blog articles on things we have learned, the specifics of conversion, and even some of the legal issues involved. If any topic is of particular interest, please let us know. What would you like to know?

This post is part of our “HTML5 Article index” in these articles, we aim to help you understand the world of HTML5.

Are you a Developer working with PDF files?

Our developers guide contains a large number of technical posts to help you understand the PDF file Format.

Do you need to solve any of these problems?