Python Forum

Is it possible to create an PDF based on Rich output?

Or is there another solution/package in Python to create a PDF with RTF?

For this method you need the Python modules fitz and striprtf.

The module pypandoc could do this in less lines, but it doesn't work for me. .rtf is not included in the file types.

PDFs are complicated things. You need to tell fitz various things.

Check out the docs for fitz (PyMuPDF) here.

import fitz
from striprtf.striprtf import rtf_to_text
print(fitz.__doc__)

rtf = '/home/pedro/Documents/ancient_hero.rtf' # an rtf encoded file
savepath = '/home/pedro/Documents/ancient_hero.pdf'

# get the text from the rtf encoded file using stripf module
with open(rtf) as f:
    pdfdata = f.read()
    pdftext = rtf_to_text(pdfdata)
    
# set output page size
MEDIABOX = fitz.paper_rect("A4") # output page format: A4
# set the margins 72 points = 1"
WHERE = MEDIABOX + (36, 36, -36, -36) # leave borders of 0.5 inches

story = fitz.Story()  # create an empty story
body = story.body  # access the body of its DOM
with body.add_paragraph() as para:  # store desired content
    para.set_font("sans-serif").set_color("black").add_text(pdftext)

writer = fitz.DocumentWriter(savepath)
more = 1

while more:
    device = writer.begin_page(MEDIABOX)
    more, _ = story.place(WHERE)
    story.draw(device)
    writer.end_page()

writer.close()