create Document thumbnail when you upload the file using php

Question

I need to create a thumbnail for office documents which are uploaded using php. I already have a solution. Steps: 1. Upload the file. 2.Run a shell script which will use openoffice to convert into PDF and from PDF using ghostscript and imagemagic create thumbnail for the 1st page.

This works but I Wanted to know if there are any other alternative for this task, The development platform is Linux.

Thanks

Answer 1

wvWare ; check out the utilities section. This hasn't been maintained in awhile so newer formats may not work. Alternatively, if you want to grab just the text and not preserve formatting (hence no thumbnail,) use this: catdoc (I know that's not what you're asking for, but I figured I'd include it anyway.)