RE: Print PDF File on IFS to i Printer

You can crete the ASCII Printer device and to print PDF directly from it as long as your printer would support PDF natively. But here are at least two problems:
1) Most printers support old versions of PDF, that means if you have PDF being created with the latest version of PDF, then will not print.
2) In order to have the printers to natively print PDF, your printer will require HUGE amount of memory, so it will work for small and simple documents, but not for rich-content PDF ones.... the memory cards for Printers is just as expensive as the printer itself, of course if you find the memory card available for your printer model.

So, here is how you could implement it:

1) Use ghostscript to convert your PDF to PCL (PCL is the native printing language for most laser printers). There is already precompiled version that should run under PASE on your IBM i, you can download it from: http://computer-refuge.org/classiccmp/aixpdslib/pub/ghostscript/RISC/5.3/exec/
2) Create a Printer File type *ASCII
3) FTP the PCL converted from PDF into the *ASCII Printer File.
4) Transfer the spool created with FTP into any attached printer to your IBM i.

That is exactly how I implemented it and it is working smoothly so far.
Jorge Merino

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael Ryan
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 12:19 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Print PDF File on IFS to i Printer

That's possible. How would I get the PDF file to the ASCII printer? Would
the printer know how to handle PDF?

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Kirk Goins <kirkgoins@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Can you create a 2nd device for the same printer and set it up as a ASCII
printer?

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM, Michael Ryan <michaelrtr@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Hello all -

I checked the archives, but I'm seeing different approaches and I'm not
sure
they'll work in my situation. And here's my situation. I'm receiving HTML
in
an XML element (thanks Scott) and converting it to PDF (thanks Aaron). I
now
need to print that PDF file to an i attached printer. The PDF file

contains

an image. I'd rather not have to employ a PC in the process if I don't

have

to. Is Ghostscript an option? Success stories with installing that and
making it work? Vendors can reply offline directly to me.

Thanks!
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