Arbortext Publishing Engine ships with an ACL Arbortext PE Application for transforming one document into another, possibly of a different format. The application is invoked when the Arbortext PE Request Manager receives an HTTP request with an f=convert query parameter. For an HTTP POST request, Arbortext Publishing Engine converts the document passed as the HTTP message body.

Since the deprecation of the file parameter for f=convert, document conversion can be done only through POST requests.

Document conversion supports:

An example of an f=convert request within the HTTP request looks like:

This request specifies loading the file passed in the request body, and then transforming it to HTML using the default stylesheet for the provided file. The resulting HTML document will be returned to the web client as the body of the HTTP response.

Every f=convert request must specify an output document format. Other parameters specify additional instructions on how to read the input document and transform it into the desired output.

The basic flow of control for a conversion operation is to load a document into memory, operate on the in-memory document, then transform the in-memory document to the desired output format on disk. The details vary depending upon the format of the input document, transformation parameters specified, and the desired format for the output document.

You can also call the document conversion processor from an ACL, Java, or JavaScript application. Refer to Customizing Document Conversion for information.