RE: Best document formatting language

Hi Scott, 

Scott Klement wrote:

> Generating PostScript works very nicely, the downside to it 
> is that you have to generate PostScript. :)

If it has the same learning curve as AFP that wouldn't be a problem

> What I mean by that is that the iSeries doesn't support 
> PostScript, so you won't be able to create a nice graphical 
> document with DDS via CODE Designer (or whatever) and then 
> write it out as PostScript. That won't work (at least not 
> easily... there are APIs that convert AFPDS to PostScript, 
> but they're slow and don't work very well, IMHO)

I have tried some open source that uses HPT but indeed it has not very
good results.

> Obviously, it requires more work to write PostScript 
> directly. The nice thing is, PostScript is a text format, so 
> you could potentially use something like CGIDEV2 to create 
> "externally defined" PostScript files. 

It is not clear to me what you mean by that.

> a) There's open source software called Ghostscript that will 
> convert from PostScript a million other formats, including 
> PDF and PCL.  It doesn't run natively on the iSeries, but 
> Ghostscript will run under PASE. 

I know of ghostscript. Does Ghostscript require modifications for
running under PASE ?

> Alternately, you could run it on your Linux box, and do the 
> conversions there.
> 
> For very large documents, this might not be practical. If you 
> need to print large documents, I suggest getting a printer 
> that supports PostScript -- they're easy to find, and 
> relatively cheap.

To my luck, all of our printers do support it :)

> In my experience, the Postscript to PDF translation is nearly perfect.

That would be great, because the AFP2PDF conversion that we do now is
not accurate.

> b) Hylafax understands PostScript natively, so you should 
> have no problem with that.

Right.

> c) Outputting AFPDS from PostScript is something I've never 
> done, and I don't know how possible this is.

I don't think I would translate PS to AFP. 
I'm affraid it will be just such pain as doing it from AFP to pdf.

> The other thing you might consider is XML. It's becoming more 
> and more of a standard for this sort of thing.  Your program 
> writes out XML data, and that data can then be transformed 
> into any other format.
> 
> For example, the socket and IFS tutorials on my web site were 
> written in Docbook (which is an XML language).  I can 
> transform the docbook into HTML, PDF, RTF, TeX, PostScript, 
> and many other formats by running it through the appropriate 
> formatting program.

If I understand this right, it needs some formatting program on the
other (receiving) side. 
That wouldn't be an option when sending it via email I think?

> At this point in time,I find PostScript to be a better 
> choice. I find it easier to make it work. However, I think 
> XML is probably the way things will go in the future. It's 
> something to think about.

So Postscript seems the solution. I'll dive in it.

Thanks a lot,
Arco Simonse
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