Twenty or so years ago, at a previous employer, we had a customer who needed to print hundreds of TIFF image files each day or week. We put a third-party OEM TIFF print card in an HP LaserJet printer. I wrote a C program to the spool file API's that wrapped each TIFF page in a spool file page and copied the full TIFF into the spool along with the HP/PCL "escape" that sent the printer into TIFF mode. Most of the TIFF files were multipage, so the code had to also interpret the TIFF file and separate the pages.
The customer was a county land records department. Their customers, the local title agencies, wanted copies of every filing. Eventually the title companies got content management systems of their own and we converted the thing to write the images to CD. They'd still use the print facility to get a clean set of copies, though. The county charged the title companies a per-page fee and paid off the development costs fairly quickly.
Wrapping each TIFF page in a spool file page facilitated restart. The right number of pages showed up in the WRKOUTQ and WRKSPLF displays. When the printer jammed (note: when, not if) the operator could restart after the last good page. I heard that after several years, that printer wore out. They bought a brand spanking new printer to replace it but didn't realize they needed a TIFF card for it. It took several days for them to understand why reams and reams of paper would spew out of the printer with only a few block graphic characters on each page.
I wrote the programs in C because we didn't have ILE at the time. It'd be easy to do in RPG now that we have the ability to use the C stream functions directly in RPG.
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Charles Wilt
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2012 8:47 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Print images to network printer
Yeah I was a bit surprised that Canon's charging for PDF...
But most business class printers support it now-a-days..
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/18972-18972-3328059-14638-236263-3815797.html?dnr=1
HP PCL 5e; HP PCL 6; HP postscript level 3 emulation; direct PDF (v
1.4) printing
It's not really surprising given how close PDF is to PS.
Charles
On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 9:04 AM, Richard Schoen <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Canon does appear to have direct print, but not for TXT or PRN and PDF is extra $$$$.
In any case, the number of devices that have print processors other than PCL or Postscript re pretty limited and are probably MFP devices.
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