-2

We have a usecase to generate PDF from HTML for both RTL and LTR languages. Can anyone share the differences between headless and Itext to evaluate which is better for us?

Batman
  • 47
  • 1
  • 6
Hemanth Kumar
  • 21
  • 1

1 Answers1

3

It depends on your expectations of the PDF. If you just want an ordinary PDF, then you can choose any tool that converts HTML to PDF.

However, if you want an archivable PDF (PDF/A), an accessible PDF (PDF/UA) or a PDF 2.0 document, then iText 7 + the pdfHTML add-on + the pdfCalligraph add-on is the better choice. I don't know of any other HTML to PDF conversion software that is PDF 2.0-ready, nor do I think many HTML to PDF convertors support PDF/A or PDF/UA. For instance: with an ordinary HTML to PDF convertor you can convert Arabic content to a PDF, but when you try to convert the PDF to Arabic content, you will get a result that is slightly different. With iText 7, you create PDF documents that can be extracted correctly.

See How to convert HTML containing Arabic/Hebrew characters to PDF? for an RTL example. This FAQ entry is part of the HTML to PDF tutorial.

NOTE: I'm the original developer of iText; you should get the point of view of the people developing Headless Chrome too.

Bruno Lowagie
  • 75,994
  • 9
  • 109
  • 165
  • Thanks for your inputs. – Hemanth Kumar Aug 22 '18 at 13:33
  • 1
    Thanks, incidentally, someone posted a question today that confirms my answer: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51965512 The person who posted that question tried different tools other than iText, but none of those tools were able to render some text in Hindi correctly. – Bruno Lowagie Aug 22 '18 at 13:37