An efficient way to convert document to pdf format

Question

I have been trying to find the efficient way to convert document e.g. doc, docx, ppt, pptx to pdf. So far i have tried docsplit and oowriter, but both took > 10 seconds to complete the job on pptx file having size 1.7MB. Can any one suggest me a better way or suggestions to improve my approach?

What i have tried:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
import time

def convert(src, dst):
    d = {'src': src, 'dst': dst}
    commands = [
        '/usr/bin/docsplit pdf --output %(dst)s %(src)s' % d,
        'oowriter --headless -convert-to pdf:writer_pdf_Export %(dst)s %(src)s' % d,
    ]

    for i in range(len(commands)):
        command = commands[i]
        st = time.time()
        process = Popen(command, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE, shell=True) # I am aware of consequences of using `shell=True` 
        out, err = process.communicate()
        errcode = process.returncode
        if errcode != 0:
            raise Exception(err)
        en = time.time() - st
        print 'Command %s: Completed in %s seconds' % (str(i+1), str(round(en, 2)))

if __name__ == '__main__':
    src = '/path/to/source/file/'
    dst = '/path/to/destination/folder/'
    convert(src, dst)

Output:

Command 1: Completed in 11.91 seconds
Command 2: Completed in 11.55 seconds

Environment:

• Linux - Ubuntu 12.04
• Python 2.7.3

More tools result:

• jodconverter took 11.32 seconds

Answer 1

Try calling unoconv from your Python code, it took 8 seconds on my local machine, I don't know if it's fast enough for you:

time unoconv 15.\ Text-Files.pptx
real    0m8.604s