Clarification about the relationship between ToPDFPlugin and the GenPDFAddOn

Am I correct in understanding that the ToPDFPlugin is a complete and enhanced replacement of the former GenPDFAddOn? Are there plans to make the GenPDFAddOn available in Foswiki too?

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They are not quite complete replacements for each other - GenPDFAddOn uses htmldoc and appears to require fewer server side resources (on my shared hosting ToPDFPlugin is killed more often than it succeeds). whereas ToPDFPlugin is more look and feel complete (I think)

I definitely will be porting GenPDFAddOn to foswiki is no one else does - just don't ask me when :/

-- SvenDowideit - 15 Jan 2009

Just adding a couple of details:

• Probably the biggest shortcoming of GenPDF is that the version 1.8 of the underlying HTMLDOC engine doesn't support stylesheets: "HTMLDOC supports most HTML 3.2 elements, some HTML 4.0 elements, and can generate title and table of contents pages".
• The intent of HTMLDOC version 1.9 is to add CSS support too. It seems to be taking it forever to be released though. I think someone (Sven maybe?) has used the pre-release version of 1.9 with GenPDF.

-- SeanMorgan - 15 Jan 2009

yup, I've used 1.9 pre and its much better at css - not prefect

-- SvenDowideit - 15 Jan 2009

A follow-up question, perhaps for Sven: since I don't have a compiled version of HTMLDOC 1.9 ... for PDF generation that includes CSS, which do you prefer (and why?) ToPDF or GenPDFLatex? (my production server is TWiki 4.2.3 on Windows).

-- SeanMorgan - 25 Jan 2009

personally I use GenPDFAddOn and PublishContrib with htmldoc 1.9 - and am still thinking to roll GenPDFAddOn's functionality into PublishPlugin

-- SvenDowideit - 26 Jan 2009