I would appreciate your thoughts and opinions on the following:

I am looking to render documents [that are constructed at runtime] into
multiple document formats. At a minimum the documents will need to be
rendered as HTML, and separately as PDF. Ideally we could also offer a
subset additionally as xls and docx (Excel and/or Word 2007) files.

All files will be distributed via ASP.NET Web site. This is a "greenfield"
project using .NET 3.5, and I can do whatever I want.

It appears to me that there are two general strategies I could take.

1. Render all documents initially as HTML, then to the other document types.

2. Render all documents initially into whatever the final document type will
be (i.e., do not render first as HTML, but just render the pdf file
directly, for example).

Keeping in mind that these files are all built at runtime from information
and templates stored in a database... These templates are basically HTML
snippets styled with css.

My initial preference is for alternative #1 above, as I could have one
single code base that builds these documents at runtime. That single code
base cranks out the HTML version, which is one of the required formats. From
the HTML, it would be a relatively trivial matter to convert the document to
PDF or whatever (there are 3rd party components that could do this
automatically and quickly - perhaps called via some custom HTTP module that
I write).

Thoughts? Opinions?

Thanks!