Hacker News Reader

Comment by coolwanglu | Hacker News Reader

Hello, I'm the author. MATHML is not used. PDF is rendered with only HTML/CSS, and a few JS.

Please comment at github such that I can see it in time.

This is clever, thanks for sharing.

When viewing the output (using the "computer science cheat sheet") I found some differences between browsers that I thought HN readers might find interesting. These aren't primarily issues with your tool, hence posting here.

- I primarily use Chrome (21) as my browser, and the cheat sheet renders very quickly. I noticed it doesn't seem to render some equations correctly (see bad operators here[1]).

- FF (15.0.1) seems to render more correctly, but it is glacially slow. The whole app (chrome and all) freezes for several seconds between clicks while the document is loaded in any tab.

- IE (9) renders the same page both correctly and quickly.

[1] http://imageshack.us/a/img88/3754/chromeformulas.png

The problem happens only on Windows.

For Chrome, if you zoom in, I think everything should be fine.But Chrome is lack of antialias in Windows.

I'm trying to solve the problem of Firefox.

Just to add to the compatibility list, all examples render perfectly on Opera 12, albeit a bit slow.

Amazing - I am attempting to install this on mac osx lion -- it is taking a lot of time because of the dependencies. With so many dependencies the probability of failure is very high. Let's hope it works.

I urge you to find a way to allow people to install your software more easily.

I managed to get it to install (after about an hour and a half of tinkering. However I get "Segmentation fault" when I try running it:

pdf2htmlEX --debug=1 test.pdf

temporary dir: /tmp/pdf2htmlEX-LY9cOv

Preprocessing: ....

Working: Add new temporary file: /tmp/pdf2htmlEX-LY9cOv/__css

Add new temporary file: /tmp/pdf2htmlEX-LY9cOv/__pages

Add new temporary file: /tmp/pdf2htmlEX-LY9cOv/p1.png

Install font: (29 0) -> f1

Add new temporary file: /tmp/pdf2htmlEX-LY9cOv/f1.pfa

Segmentation fault: 11

I was able to install

cmake, fontforge and libpoppler with homebrew,

gcc-4.7 using

https://github.com/sol-prog/gcc-4.7-binary

you mean `poppler` instead of `libpoppler`

     sudo apt-add-repository ppa:coolwanglu/pdf2htmlex   
     sudo apt-get update
     sudo apt-get install pdf2htmlex

I haven't yet tried to build on mac os, but in ubuntu it was trivially simple.

I cannot reproduce it with a 20110222 version of fontforge.

Would you mind send me the pdf file, for me to debug?

Does it always crash, with other pdf files?

yes - it crashes as described with any pdf file.

sorry to hear that. some guys are working on MacPorts and Homebrew formula.

I hope this would help you. https://trac.macports.org/ticket/36028

It's confirmed by some guys using Mac. We are working on this. Please hold on, and join the discussion on github if you like. Thanks for your patience.

The compiling problem should have been fixed. Could you please try the latest master branch, see if it works well or maybe fail at one assertion?

Thank you for replying - I tried the new branch, and posted the problem I encountered as an issue with gists attached on the github.

The problem is that I don't have a machine with Mac. Which version of fontforge have you installed?

This is what fontforge displays when I start it up:

Executable based on sources from 14:57 GMT 31-Jul-2012-D. Library based on sources from 14:57 GMT 31-Jul-2012.

I'm now trying compile with an older version. But please update fontforge if you can.

I think my fontforge is the current version (see above) -- please correct me if I'm wrong.

Usually I built from git. There has been some improvement relevant to pdf2htmlEX during the path month.

However it should not crash, and it's confirmed by many people now.

Could you please try the commit f02e1d4 ?

Hi! This is an incredible project. I'm just curious, you mention that crocodoc has been "consulted" for this project.

Did you ask them how they do their HTML5 conversion or what exactly do you mean by that?

Anyway, a big Thanks for creating this project!

I meant I took a look at a HTML page generated by crocodoc. Their approach was interesting.

This is awesome stuff! Thanks for sharing this.

Damn, that's cool. Somewhat full circle too, in light of the many pdf printer drivers in use today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com