Re: Iseries Forms design and spool merging software -- MIDRANGE-L

Joel, the one I know some of is WinSpool/400 and its companion products. Very nice system of products for monitoring AS/400 output queues, then doing any of a number of things automatically, including conversion to multiple PC-file options, including PDF, Excel, etc., as well as various distribution options.

As I remember, the license is corporate, not based on seats.

Printing is done, if at all, through Windows printers - it converts to documents, so converting to PCL or PS is handled by the Windows drivers.

It has Windows-based tools for converting the layout of a spooled file report into all manner of things.

It can, on the 400, burst reports according a value in a fixed position on the page - no program changes needed. It does not, IIRC, use codes in the programs, most conversion and reformatting is done on the PC, similarly to Monarch.

As far as everything on the 400, I'm not sure - you'd need to talk to them - the stuff of theirs that I used would bring reports to the PC and process there. But their product line is pretty big.

You might look into IBM's InfoPrint Designer, as well.

HTH
Vern

At 05:15 PM 1/29/2004 -0600, you wrote:

We are considering purchasing a forms design and spool merging software
product.
Does anyone use any of the following products?

Are there any others available that I should look at?

Create!Form www.createform.com

Acom EzDocs/400 www.acom.com

Formtastic/400 www.quadrantsoftware.com

eliteForm/400 www.elitedocuments.com

Winspool/400 www.rjssoft.com

Formsprint/400 www.formsprint.com
What features should I be asking about?  Here are some preliminary ones that
I thought of.  Can you suggest any other important features that would be
nice to have?
. No additional charge for each new user or printer
        (This is critical because we don't want to limit the distribution of
a successful, popular report.)
.       Tool must support PCL (all normal PC type printers) and Postscript
type printers, and without any additional hardware      at each printer
.       Tool should be capable of taking a standard spool file and changing
fonts & adding bar codes WITHOUT program changes.
.       Tool should be capable of doing the above WITH control codes
embedded in the program.
.       Form design tool should be a graphical Windows-based WYSIWYG tool at
form design stage.
.       Report should successfully print with only an AS/400 working
(without a PC doing any merging or formatting after the         design
stage)
.       One should be able to design a single label and have the template
replicate to all labels on a page.  For example,        a sheet of 1" x 4"
retail shelf tags.
other features???

Thanks!!