Trying to turn a PDF into a DOCX
Over the weekend, I've tried to work on a conversion from HTML to PDF and to DOCX.
It all started with wkhtmltopdf. I noticed (much too late) that this project is not maintained anymore. So a replacement was needed. I found one with Puppeteer, and it works really well. It feels a bit too much for the task, but it creates a PDF out of my static HTML page, which is enough.
While at it, I fired up Claude Code and asked to do the same for the HTML to DOCX conversion. Oh boy, I didn't know that this task was a nightmare. For years I had this conversion planned for a tool but never found the time to do it. Now with CC, I thought it would be an easy task that is done in minutes.
After some more than an hour, I stopped and thought, this is not worth the effort. I don't blame CC or the tools I've used for this job. I blame the DOCX format for being so shitty.
I've tried pandoc, html2docx and html-2-docx, and none of them produced the output I've expected or needed. There are also commercial tools, which I thought would be too much for what I require. And it still is not worth paying money for something I require so rarely I could do the adjustments myself every time I require it.
So I stepped back and thought, maybe this feature needs to keep lying in my to-do list for the next years. I had already put enough effort into it, and it will not save the time I already invested in it.
Perhaps in some years, I will try it again. 🤷
34 of #100DaysToOffload
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