Re: Microsoft Word and the iSeries

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The other posts on this subject go basically where I was going:  If you 
have a "template" then merging the data is pretty straight forward.  In 
Java you could use Freemarker to render the templates into the final 
document.  You could also use CGIDEV2 to merge the data in RPG.  It just 
depends upon the approach you want to take and the language you are most 
comfortable with.

As was also mentioned, you could generate PDF's from the template.  All 
of this can be accomplished with Open Source tools using Java.  Most of 
it could also be accomplished with Open Source or, at least, free tools 
in RPG (not sure about the RTF to PDF piece in RPG).

Plenty of options.

Pete


Jonathan Mason wrote:
> Hi Pete
>
> I suppose what they are basically looking for is a means of using Word for
> generating their forms, for example an invoice, and to populate the form
> with AS400 data rather than print the forms over the AS400 data.
>
> Mail merge could work to a certain extent by including all header
> information (e.g. name, address, etc) on each detail record in the data
> source, but this seems cumbersome.
>
> >From an AS400/iSeries/i5/System i perspective I would do whatever coding
> necessary in RPG, on the PC I could muddle something together in VB.
>
> All the best
>
> Jonathan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pete Helgren
> Sent: 17 January 2007 15:36
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> Subject: Re: Microsoft Word and the iSeries
>
> OK.  If mail merge (in Windows) isn't what you want, then you could 
> potentially use several other approaches to generating a "document" on 
> the System i.  Perhaps a bit more about the solution you envision would 
> be helpful.  What languages are you comfortable with?  What volumes of 
> documents are you anticipating?
>
> Pete Helgren
>
>   
> > I thought about using mail merge and then discounted it for a couple of
> > reasons:
> >
> > 1) The need to be able to have (potentially) header, detail and footer
> >     
> data
>   
> > to be merged and
> >
> > 2) The additional manual steps needed to run the mail merge
> >
> > Ideally they want to be able to generate the document on the iSeries and
> > place it in the IFS where Word can find it.  I also thought about
> >     
> generating
>   
> > an RTF file and including replacement codes such as %%ORDERNO%% which the
> > programs could overwrite with the correct values, but on looking at an RTF
> > file's structure it looked too prone to errors.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Jonathan
> >
> >