Learning pdfChip - the Tutorial

The hardest part of any new product is taking your first steps... Luckily the tutorial was designed to assist you with exactly that. This chapter introduces you to the tutorial and what you'll find in it.

Folder structure and conventions

The tutorial consists of a number of numbered folders - when new tutorial examples are devised, they will simply be added to the end of the list. Each of these folders is self-contained and is an HTML template together with all of the additional files it needs for pdfChip to be able to convert it into a PDF document. The naming convention has been kept as similar as possible:

  • The HTML file to convert is always called index.html. In those few examples where there are multiple HTML files a suffix number has been added (index2, index3...)
  • If the example needs fonts, they are inside of the fonts sub folder.
  • If the example needs images, they are inside of the images sub folder.
  • If the example needs scripts, they are inside of the scripts sub folder.
  • If the example needs CSS files, they are inside of the styles sub folder.
  • The templates folder contains other PDF files from which pdfChip can copy data (see the section "ISO compliant PDF" in the previous chapter or the tutorial example on "Creating standards-compliant PDF" for more information).

Each tutorial example folder also contains a read me PDF document with more information on what the tutorial step wants to clarify and how to use it.

Building tutorial examples

For all tutorial examples start with reading the read me PDF file located in the tutorial example folder. If there are any special conversion remarks for that example, they will be detailed there. Most tutorial examples though can simply be converted using the simple pdfChip command-line syntax; if you are using a terminal or command-prompt window and you change directories into the directory of the tutorial example, the command:

<Path to pdfChip>/pdfChip index.html result.pdf

will convert the HTML file into a PDF file in the same folder, named result.pdf

The list with tutorial steps

There are tutorial examples for all main features of pdfChip. To see what is available simply go through the sub folders of the tutorial folder. The documentation file always indicates what the topic for that tutorial example is.

The available steps are:

  • 001 Simple HTML
  • 002 Page geometry boxes
  • 003 Positioning
  • 004 Standards compliance
  • 005 Placing PDF
  • 006 Colors
  • 007 Metadata
  • 008 JavaScript
  • 009 Fonts
  • 010 Barcode
  • 011 Multiple pages through JavaScript
  • 012 Multiple pages with advanced pagination
  • 013 SVG
  • 014 MathML

The tutorial was designed to take you from the very simple to the more complex subjects. As such it may be worthwhile to simply go through all tutorial examples in the order they are presented. If you are very familiar with HTML and CSS, some of these steps may be obvious as they reiterate HTML or CSS concepts in the light of using pdfChip.

Download ZIP archive with pdfChip tutorial files

A ZIP archive containing all the necessary files, including read me files providing an explanation for each step, can be downloaded by clicking below:

pdfChip_Tutorial_2022-11-10.zip