Skip to main content

Posts

Generating PDF/A From HTML in Meteor

My live-chat app was a folk of project Rocket.Chat which was built with Meteor. The app had a feature that administrative users were able to export the conversations into PDF files. And, they wanted to archive these files for a long time. I happened to know that PDF/A documents were good for this purpose. It was really frustrated to find a solution with free libraries. Actually, it took me more than two weeks to find a possible approach. TL, DR; Using Puppeteer to generate a normal PDF and using PDFBox to load and converting the generated PDF into PDF/A compliance. What is PDF/A? Here is a definition from Wikipedia: PDF/A  is an  ISO -standardized version of the  Portable Document Format  (PDF) specialized for use in the  archiving  and long-term  preservation  of  electronic documents . PDF/A differs from PDF by prohibiting features unsuitable for long-term archiving, such as  font  linking (as opposed to  font embedding ) and encryption. The ISO requirements for PDF/A  f

Math fundamentals and Katex

It was really tough for me to understand many articles about data science due to the requirements of understanding mathematics (especially linear algebra). I’ve started to gain some basic knowledges about Math by reading a book first. The great tool Typora and stackedit with supporting Katex syntax simply helps me to display Math-related symbols. Let’s start! The fundamental ideas of mathematics: “doing math” with numbers and functions. Linear algebra: “doing math” with vectors and linear transformations. 1. Solving equations Solving equations means finding the value of the unknown in the equation. To find the solution, we must break the problem down into simpler steps. E.g: x 2 − 4 = 4 5 x 2 − 4 + 4 = 4 5 + 4 x 2 = 4 9 x = 4 9 ∣ x ∣ = 7 x = 7  or  x = − 7 \begin{aligned} x^2 - 4 &= 45\\ x^2 - 4 + 4 &= 45 + 4\\ x^2 &= 49\\ \sqrt{x}&=\sqrt{49}\\ |x| &= 7\\ x=7 &\text{ or } x=-7 \end{aligned} x 2 − 4 x 2 − 4 + 4 x 2 x ​ ∣ x ∣ x = 7 ​ = 4 5 = 4 5 + 4 = 4