Hi Nathan - lots of words to follow, primarily as an early review of
iPDF, based on brief usage these last couple of days.
2 things - yes, a lot of parameters - but I have found it not unwieldy,
as you end up using only what you need - yes, it could maybe be
organized with "additional" parameter kinds of things, but it IS free
and works well.
In addition, it has a service program that, like Brad, wraps around a
Java class that is built over iText. The service program has procedures
that correspond, for the most part, with the command parameters. And
those procedures give you very fine control of things.
iPDF appears to assume you use CPYSPLF with *FCFC info - so it has to be
an *SCS or *IPDS (IIRC) spooled file. That works for us in our current
need, I'll need to change things so they don't use page segments
anymore, hence, are not *AFPDS file types.
So iPDF doesn't seem to be written to let you change an existing PDF -
that capability IS part of iText, so it could probably be added. Again,
for us, that is not needed. The current process of reprinting invoices
works fine, and being able to plug in signatures this way will be
effective. Other solutions would take more time and effort, to the best
of my ability to estimate that.
As to URLs, you can attach a hyperlink to an image - I don't think the
authors have done the same when adding text, but if iText has it, one
could add it yourself - source code is included - or go back to the
authors with that request - no idea how responsive they are, of course.
Lots of words to say, I've been able to present it as a viable solution
to our need to simplify and streamline an old process.
Cheers
Vern
On 3/22/2016 4:50 PM, Nathan Andelin wrote:
I did some testing of iPDF, and it should fit the bill for our needs now...
I was just reading the iPDF doc:
http://bit.ly/1Rj7OoI
The CREATEIPDF command has an extraordinary number of command parameters,
which are delineated across something like 17 pages in the doc. That's an
intense (unwieldy) interface for converting spool files to PDFs.
We appear to be a little off topic here. If I understand correctly iPDF
doesn't answer the question about embedding hyperlinks in PDF files.
midrange.com
