An efficient way to convert document to pdf format

Question

I have been trying to find the efficient way to convert document e.g. doc, docx, ppt, pptx to pdf. So far i have tried docsplit and oowriter, but both took > 10 seconds to complete the job on pptx file having size 1.7MB. Can any one suggest me a better way or suggestions to improve my approach?

What i have tried:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE import time  def convert(src, dst):     d = {'src': src, 'dst': dst}     commands = [         '/usr/bin/docsplit pdf --output %(dst)s %(src)s' % d,         'oowriter --headless -convert-to pdf:writer_pdf_Export %(dst)s %(src)s' % d,     ]      for i in range(len(commands)):         command = commands[i]         st = time.time()         process = Popen(command, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE, shell=True) # I am aware of consequences of using `shell=True`          out, err = process.communicate()         errcode = process.returncode         if errcode != 0:             raise Exception(err)         en = time.time() - st         print 'Command %s: Completed in %s seconds' % (str(i+1), str(round(en, 2)))  if __name__ == '__main__':     src = '/path/to/source/file/'     dst = '/path/to/destination/folder/'     convert(src, dst) 

Output:

Command 1: Completed in 11.91 seconds Command 2: Completed in 11.55 seconds 

Environment:

• Linux - Ubuntu 12.04
• Python 2.7.3

More tools result:

• jodconverter took 11.32 seconds

Answer 1

Try calling unoconv from your Python code, it took 8 seconds on my local machine, I don't know if it's fast enough for you:

time unoconv 15.\ Text-Files.pptx real    0m8.604s 

Answer 2

Pandoc is a wonderful tool capable of doing what you'd like quickly. Since you're using Popen to effectively shell out the command for the tool, it doesn't matter what language the tool is written in (Pandoc is written in Haskell).