RE: PDF Limitations?

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005, Scott Klement wrote:

> I think they're looking for software that runs on the iSeries, takes a 
> spooled file, and converts it to a PDF suitable for e-mailing.  Your 
> software, scs2pdf, doesn't do that.  It runs on a Linux box, waits for data 
> on a print queue (well, technically, lp5250d does that part), converts the 
> results to a PDF document on the Linux box.
>
> Problem is, you've completely lost contact with what the original spooled 
> file was at that point. That makes it hard to associate a particular PDF 
> document with an e-mail address & message.

You are absolutely correct.  However, not all hope is lost.  We have a 
customer that routinely emails pdfs that were created using lp5250d.  Here 
is the relevant part of the configuration:

outputcommand = scs2ascii > /tmp/output.ps ; ps2pdf /tmp/output.ps 
/home/user/pspdf.pdf

we have an instance of lp5250d running for each user that wants to email 
these pdfs.  The user simply moves the spooled file to their appropriate 
out queue and then attaches the file that is created to their email 
message.

We have another customer that needs to archive some large reports that are 
created monthly.  He needs to be able to search the archives as well, so a 
searchable format is critical.  He has three reports, so we created three 
out queues each with a different name for the resulting pdf.  This config 
looks like:

outputcommand = scs2pdf> /home/samba/<reportname>-`date 
+%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S`.pdf

which results in the report name containing the date it was printed as 
well.

There are many more possibilities.  The outputcommand could pipe the 
printed report to the mail program and it would be automatically emailed. 
Or an automatic archive to CD could be created.  Or it could be sent to 
another machine via ftp or ssh.  Or....  (you get the idea)

> Part of me is interested in converting scs2pdf to something that could be run 
> on the iSeries to do this... and part of me is saying "What? Am I crazy? I 
> don't have time for the stuff I'm doing now!"

I've thought of doing the same thing.  My thoughts have been to create a 
special type of out queue that could send additional information to 
lp5250d.  I don't want to make an iSeries version of scs2pdf because quite 
honestly, there is far less that I can do with the results on the iSeries.

James Rich

It's not the software that's free; it's you.
        - billyskank on Groklaw