There are many situations where one has a multipage Postscript, TIFF, MO:DCA or other format document that one wishes to make available on the Web. Unfortunately, all existing Web clients cannot handle multi-page image formats natively, and most helper image viewers, like xv or PC Paint, do not handle multipage documents. Thus there is a need for a program which can understand multipage image files and deliver them to a Web client, one page at a time.
Any2html is built using the Manyimage image transform library, created at IBM's Almaden Research Center. Manyimage is a portable C library that can read, transform, and write image in over 50 different image file formats, including PS, GIF, TIFF, JPEG, BMP, MO:DCA, PDF, and many others. In any2html, Manyimage is used to split a single page out of a multipage file and then generate a single-page GIF file. Any2html follows the CGI Web protocol to receive directions and deliver its view of the document. A set of default navigation button icons (GIF files) are included, but can be replaced during installation with other buttons. Authors may also request that Any2html place any arbitrary escape link after the navigation buttons.
Any2html is FastCGI enabled. This means that in addition to running as a normal CGI program, it can be run as an active daemon subserver which should respond more quickly than a standard CGI program. To find out more about FastCGI, see Open Market's FastCGI website.
Any2html uses an installation-specific cache directory into which it stores the individual page images for possible reuse. It can also run cacheless. Both black-and-white and color documents can be handled.
Any2html can be downloaded here via anonymous ftp from phoenix.almaden.ibm.com. Here is the detailed manual page for any2html. Currently it is available for AIX and Win32 (NT & 95).
Live examples of various output styles:
