[thelist] PDF conversion methods and tools

[Pringle, Ron]

I have a large number of word documents that are sent to me (meeting agendas
and minutes for City Council) that are required by law to be made available
to the public.

Currently, I manually convert these Word docs to PDF, give them specific
names, and place them in a directory where they are dynamically attached to
the appropriate committee description on the website.

I would like to automate this process somehow, either on the backend where a
Word doc is uploaded via an admin form and converted to PDF, or the PDF is
generated on the fly when a client requests it. IDEALLY, I'd like to serve
this content up automagically as both HTML and PDF, depending on the needs
of the end user.

I'm looking for thoughts on different processes to accomplish this, and
their merits, as well as recommendations of tools to do the PDF conversion.

I apologize in advance for the fact that this particular email has nothing
to do with the letters GNU or LINUX. I hope that you'll all forgive my
transgression into the realm of signal versus noise. ;-)

Regards,
Ron