Re: AS/400 print to PC for almost free

> What I want is to get it into a format that is user-friendly for a PC user 
> with zero AS/400 know-how, not connected to the 400, (and also ideally not 
> need much PC know-how like what it is you do to printer setup to get 
> landscape print on selected reports then put it back the way it was), to 
> search report for some customer name or item # or whatever, zoom in on that 
> section of the report so it is readable, reprint just a few pages of the 
> total report, and have it legible on their PC, without having to mess with 
> Printer Setup to get landscape and other alterations just for that report.
> 
> I plan to look into Adobe Acrobat PDF onto my home PC to create the AS/400 
> reports, or perhaps get some equivalent results shareware onto my home 
> PC.  My home PC is Windows 98 which now talks to the work 400 via VPN over 
> what is laughingly called "high speed" Internet connection.

Al, 

You have a number of options, I'm sure you are aware.  Recently, there
were some postings about generating excel spreadsheets on the AS/400, so
you may wish to check the archives.

If you like PDF, you can certainly generate it with a number of third
party tools, or you can purchase a copy of the adobe blue book and
write your own version.  Also, there are lots of documentation resources
available via google.

The TN5250 package has support for generating PDF, and it's available at
no cost.  The output will most generally look like a greenbar report.

If you want a great set of inexpensive tools, look into loading linux on
a machine.  I've had great success over a number of years using perl to
generate postscript, which can be mechanically translated to PDF via the
ps2pdf command (contained in the ghostscript package).  I've also had
good success in generating PDF files from add on perl modules from what
are called the CPAN archive.  

I'm a big fan of PDF and postscript as both are standardized page
formatting languages.  I typically use postscript when the output is
known to be targeted directly to a postscript printer, and PDF when I
want to post it to a web page or e-mail it.  It seems like just about
everybody has the acrobat reader installed.

It's pretty easy to generate postscript in RPG, as it's a text only type
of format.  Example (p 37 'PostScript by Example'):

%!PS
/Palatino-Roman 162 selectfont
108 36 moveto
52 rotate
(PostScript!) show
showpage

http://westernmidrange.com/test/test.txt
http://westernmidrange.com/test/test.ps

On my linux box, I call "ps2pdf test.ps"
http://westernmidrange.com/test/test.pdf

As you can see, you can easily take advantage of special fonts.  You can
also draw vector and raster images, and a whole slew of other things.
You can make reports as pretty as you desire, and folks with PC's will
be able to view and print them with very little effort.  And, it's
searchable.

HTH

Regards,
Rich