Server-Side Document Conversion

Example Application: DOC to PDF Converter

It is common place in enterprises today that employees have to deal with a multitude of word processing formats: Files are received as DOC, DOCX, RTF, PDF and TXT everyday. Employees need to be able to edit these files and save them to the format of their choice.

For example, when sending files via e-mail as an attachment, the PDF format is slowly establishing itself as a standard - mainly due to its rich formatting capabilities. PDF, however, is rarely directly supported by the word processing applications employees use. Out of the box, for example, Microsoft Word does not provide a Save As PDF option.

One way around this problem is to install additional printer drivers and third party plug-ins to generate PDFs directly in the word processing application. Not only is this an error prone and high administrative technique of creating PDF files, it is also an expensive solution for large enterprises, as a license has to be purchased for every PC in the network.

A much better - and certainly more cost efficient - way of adding PDF generation to a network is to use TX Text Control Server for ASP.NET (incl. WPF).

Creating a DOC to PDF Converter is only a few lines of code with TX Text Control Server for ASP.NET (incl. WPF): Users can upload their finished DOC file using a simple HTTP POST request and receive the converted document as a PDF file.

As TX Text Control Server for ASP.NET (incl. WPF) is licensed on a 'per server' basis (not 'per client'), empowering one thousand employees (for example) with a PDF conversion tool requires the purchase of just one license.

Example Application: Web Publishing

The web site of an enterprise - especially in the high tech industry sector - is the most important marketing and customer service instrument that the enterprise possesses. Typically, larger enterprises have one or more departments charged with the daily maintenance and updates of the corporate web site.

Press releases, product news, job descriptions, financial data etc. are all examples of information that need to be updated on the corporate web site on a timely basis. In the early days of the Internet, one of more webmasters was employed to convert files received from all corners of the enterprise into the Internet's presentation languages HTML and CSS.

This was a time consuming and correspondingly error prone and expensive process: The Sales Department, for example, would e-mail the webmaster their latest press release as a DOC file; the webmaster would open the file in his/her text editor and add the HTML and CSS markup necessary to display the file on the corporate web site.

Using TX Text Control Server for ASP.NET (incl. WPF), the Sales Department could edit their press release, saved as a DOC file, and automatically export HTML and CSS to the corporate web site without any interaction with the webmaster. Likewise, the people in the Human Resources department could create their job descriptions and update them on the live web site as often as they desired.

Using TX Text Control Server for ASP.NET (incl. WPF) in a network allows all authorized parties in an enterprise to make changes to the enterprise's corporate web site.