The Internet gives companies the means to provide instant access to an incredible wealth of constantly changing information. As long as an end user is on the Internet, you can offer that user up-to-date information about nearly anything. But how do you provide access to that information when your end user walks away from his or her computer? And what do you do about transient information that an end user needs to preserve for record-keeping or later use?
More and more companies are recognizing that the solution to this question is PDF (Portable Document Format). PDF documents are not only a convenient, yet permanent media for presenting and storing information, but also a great way to provide users with printable versions of the information they need.
But how do you create PDF documents for your end users? Or more specifically, what's the simplest way to get information from your website into PDF document? Corda Technologies provides the answer to this question: Highwire.
This section answers the following questions about Highwire:
What is Highwire?
A module for Corda Technologies' Corda Server suite of data presentation tools, Highwire provides on-demand, server-based translation of web pages and other HTML/XHTML documents into PDF documents for printing and storage.
Highwire is the easiest and most convenient way to provide information-seekers with a tangible copy of otherwise intangible and transient information on the web. It allows content providers to deliver static snapshots of web pages in the form of PDF files that end users can download. Highwire is unique in the PDF generation world in that it not only produces PDF documents that look good when printed, but reformats documents that were designed for the web so that they fit within the confines of the printed page.
Highwire allows you to integrate PDF document generation into the exact same processes that you use to build dynamic web pages, making it easy to single-source HTML and PDF creation processes. With built-in support for scheduled document generation tasks, Highwire may soon become the answer for all of your enterprise PDF needs.
Finally, since Highwire is a part of the Corda Server data presentation suite, Highwire can work hand in hand with PopChart and OptiMap to generate high quality PDF reports containing Corda graphs and maps. To learn more about the Corda Server suite of data presentation tools, refer to the Corda Server Getting Started manual.
How Can I Use Highwire?
Among the many potential uses for Highwire include the following:
- Convert web pages containing tables, graphs, and maps into high quality reports.
- Create a printable version of a web page that is automatically sized to fit on a printed page.
- Provide customers with a PDF receipt for online transactions.
- Generate PDF account summaries and monthly statements.
- Build printable versions of online applications and other documents that a user can sign and/or keep for his or her own record.
- Archive documents on your website for historical or record-keeping purposes.
Why Do I Need Highwire?
Although there are many tools in today's market that can generate PDF documents, very few of these can generate PDF documents from HTML/XHTML, the format on which the Internet is based. Most PDF generation tools require you to translate your information into proprietary formats that are difficult to use due to a lack of sufficient authoring and preview tools. Converting your information into these proprietary formats requires the development of time-consuming, frustrating applications that often produce documents that don't look nearly as impressive as their web counterparts.
Highwire streamlines your document generation process by allowing you to convert HTML/XHTML documents to PDF. Instead of having to develop an application to produce web pages and another to produce PDF documents, you can produce both with the same application. Furthermore, the produced PDF documents will look as well-designed and colorful as your web pages.
Highwire is light-years ahead of currently existing utilities for HTML/XHTML-to-PDF conversion. Other utilities simply "print" the same thing that you see in your web browser to a PDF document, resulting in large PDF files that are simply bitmap "snapshots" of your web documents. Such utilities failt to consider the fact that the web and the printed page are two entirely different medias. Consequently, page breaks may occur at inconvenient places. Table headers won't be repeated at the top of each page, even if a table spans many pages. Worst of all, information may be cut off because tables and images are wider than the page.
Highwire is the only tool that automatically reformats your web page so that it fits comfortably within the confines of the printed page. Highwire also produces very small and easily downloadable PDF files, thanks to its ability to re-render your document as vector images instead of simply taking an ineffecient bitmap snapshot of it. This makes it a perfect solution for businesses wishing to provide customers and clients with an easy way to print and store web documents.
Highwire is also one of the few server-based utilities that provides HTML/XHTML-to-PDF conversion, meaning that it is one of the only utilities that can provide on-demand conversion of HTML/XHTML without requiring a user to have an expensive desktop application. Plus, it's server-based nature allows it to manage scheduled tasks for batch document conversion at regular intervals.
Finally, Highwire works hand-in-hand with Corda Server's other modules, PopChart and OptiMap, allowing you to generate PDF reports that mix text and tables with high-quality, vector-based graphs and maps.
How Does it Work?
Some of the most common ways to implement Highwire functionality include:
The process for implementing Highwire in each of these ways is listed below:
On-demand, Server-Based Conversion
The most common process for using Highwire is as follows:
- You build a web page.
- You build a simple web application that sends this page to the Corda Server.
- When a client browses to the web page, they can click on a button or link which initiates the web application.
- The Corda Server will translate the specified web page into a PDF document and return it to the user's browser.
This web page can be static or generated by a separate web application.
With the help of the Corda Embedder utility, this task can be accomplished using just a few lines of code. The code can even be contained within the very web application being converted.
The Corda Embedder can even generate an appropriate button for you.
The Corda Embedder utility allows you to do this in two separate ways: 1) redirect users to the document on Corda Server itself; and 2) have your web application fetch the document from Corda Server and then pass that document on to the client.
Scheduled Conversion Jobs
If you have certain documents that you wish to convert from HTML/XHTML to PDF on a regular basis, you can program Corda Server to generate PDF documents at regular intervals. Corda Server can save these documents to your website, or to a network storage location.
Custom-Built Applications
Using the Corda Server Java Library, you can build your own application that take advantage of Highwire functionality to produce PDF documents from HTML/XHTML sources.
One-Time Conversions on the Desktop
Corda Builder, a desktop program that is included with Corda Server, allows you to convert web pages to Highwire on a page-by-page basis. All you do is type in the location of the page you want to convert, and it returns a PDF document. Although a Corda Builder license is included with Corda Server, separate licenses can be purchased, allowing you to install Corda Builder on other machines.
What Kind of Documents Does Highwire Convert?
Highwire can input HTML and XHTML formatted documents. This means that it can translate most web pages.
However, there are certain restrictions. First of all, the HTML/XHTML should be well-formed according to W3C specifications. Although Highwire can often successfully render documents that do not conform to these standards, Highwire works best when the document does adhere to W3C specifications (see http://www.w3c.org).
Secondly, some features of HTML/XHTML will be ignored or only partially rendered. This includes style-sheet based positioning and background colors (except in tables). A complete list of not currently supported HTML/XHTML features can be found in Chapter 3, "Preparing Documents for Conversion." This chapter also provides information about how to optimize your HTML/XHTML for Highwire.
Finally, to support advanced features of Highwire such as headers, footers, and pagination, Highwire accepts several tags that extend the HTML/XHTML specification. Information about these tags can be found also be found in Chapter 3.
Is Highwire Compatible with my Environment?
In short, the answer is almost certainly yes. Highwire is compatible with almost all available operating systems, platforms, and web environments.
Now for the longer explanation: Highwire requires a running Corda Server or Corda Server-based application. Corda Server is a Java-based server application that can run on any computer with a Java runtime library (JRE version 1.3.1 or higher). Since Java runtime libraries exist for every major operating system, this means that the Corda Server can run virtually anywhere.
For web-based projects, we provide a Corda Embedder utility to facilitate communication between web applications and the Corda Server. The Corda Embedder is a programmatic interface available for many different web environments, including Java Servlets, JSP, ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, PERL, Java Tag Libraries, ColdFusion, and JavaScript. The Corda Embedder makes Highwire easy to use in almost any web environment.
For more detailed information about installation and architecture, please consult the Corda Server Installation and Administration manual.
What Resources and Skills Do I Need to Implement Highwire?
The amount of computing resources required will depend on the amount of documents you wish to convert, as well as their complexity. With basic Highwire deployments, you may be able to get by with installing Corda Server on a single-processor web server, while enterprise deployment may require clustering a number multiple processor systems. For more detailed recommendations, please consult a Corda Technologies sales engineer.
As for employee resources, you will need a web developer to create the web applications that translate your documents. These web applications are relatively simple to develop. You may also need the web developer to assure that your HTML/XHTML sources are optimized for Highwire. Finally, you may need a systems administrator to setup and maintain the Corda Server, although this typically does not require much time beyond the initial installation.
Do You Require Client-side Plug-ins or ActiveX Controls?
All document conversion is done on your server--you just send the server a link to or the text of a document, and it returns a PDF. The only required client-side application is the free Adobe Reader PDF viewer, which is already installed on a large majority of computers.
How Can I Try or Buy Highwire?
You can try Highwire by downloading an evaluation version of Corda Server from the Corda Technologies website at http://www.corda.com/downloads. Highwire is a module of Corda Server, and will be automatically enabled while you evaluate Corda Server. The evaluation version of Corda Server allows you to run it for 15 days, for no more than three hours at a time.
Should you wish to buy Highwire, you can purchase a license for Highwire at any time during or after the evaluation process. You can use this license to fully-activate the Highwire module of Corda Server. You can also buy licenses to activate PopChart and OptiMap modules on the same Corda Server installation.
For purchasing information, see http://www.corda.com/download/buy.
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