Any tools/libraries to convert ppt and pdf files to flash swf on server side?

Question

Hi, I'm building a pet project which needs to convert pdf and ppt files to flash swf files on the server side. This should look similar to what Scribd, Docstoc or Slideshare these websites do. But after some googling, I couldn't find any open source tools or libraries to do this except the OpenOffice wrapper. So I'm wondering how those websites do it or maybe there are some tools/libraries I don't know?

Thanks,

Wei

Answer 1

Why not just use the scribd API to upload your file, and embed the scribd file in your site?

Answer 2

Maybe you could convert from PPT to JPEG and then replay the slideshow, but that would be without the animations and special effects... take a look at http://poi.apache.org/

Answer 3

I wrote something similar a while ago. It's not pretty - I used open office to convert the ppt files to pdf, then used imagemagick to convert the pdf files to images, then wrote a flash player to display the images.

Answer 4

Convert your ppts into pdfs. And then use swftools for converting pdf (using openoffice, you can use uno bridge, which is available in C, C++, python, java, for automating the whole pdf conversion)) into swf. Its an open source library and it is damn good.

Answer 5

For PDF files, you can try this free online converter http://www.axmag.com/submit.html , upload your files at this page, a url link of flash is given after conversion.

For PPT files, you may choose File->Package for CD in PowerPoint. This leads to a folder with batch of documents, just run the .exe file, it works almost the same way as Flash.

Hope this would help!

Answer 6

you can convert ppt to jpeg using Presentation To Video Converter.. I like it convers very quickly without any problems.