Convert a .doc or .pdf to an image and display a thumbnail in Ruby?

Question

Convert a .doc or .pdf to an image and display a thumbnail in Ruby?
Does anyone know how to generate document thumbnails in Ruby (or C, python...)

Answer 1

Sample code to answer the comment by @aisensiy above :

require 'rmagick'
pdf_path = "/path/to/interesting/file.pdf"
page_index_path = pdf_path + "[0]" # first page in PDF
pdf_page = Magick::Image.read( page_index_path ).first # first item in Magick::ImageList
pdf_page.write( "/tmp/indexed-page.png" ) # implicit conversion based on file extension

Based on the path clue in answer to another question :

https://stackoverflow.com/a/6369524/765063