RE: Using OO concepts in RPG

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Booth Martin
>
>  I didn't know that Joe.  Would you give a little example?
>
> Write "Hello World" with RPG from an iSeries and print it in
> Comic Sans font
> size 22, color 44.200.188 centered between the margins, with a 2" left
> margin, a 1/2 inch margin the rest of the way around   Use the
> normal Report
> Generating Program tools available in every iSeries shop with an RPG
> compiler.
>
> Add a watermark if you've a mind for it.  :)

All the examples you need are online.

http://xml.apache.org/fop/index.html

This page will explain the FOP project, which is used to create PDF files
(or PCL, PS, SVG or a number of other formats) directly from XML-formatted
documents.  I even wrote an article on this concept - back on January 1st,
2001:

http://www.mcpressonline.com/mc?50@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@.214a29ab

This has been around a long time.  Here's a typical FO document:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format";>
  <fo:layout-master-set>
    <fo:simple-page-master master-name="content"
        page-width="210mm" page-height="297mm">
      <fo:region-body/>
    </fo:simple-page-master>
  </fo:layout-master-set>
  <fo:page-sequence master-reference="content">
    <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body">
      <fo:table table-layout="fixed" width="100%">
        <fo:table-column column-width="proportional-column-width(1)"/>
        <fo:table-body>
          <fo:table-row height="297mm">
            <fo:table-cell display-align="center">
              <fo:block text-align="center">
                <fo:external-graphic src="fop.jpg"/>
              </fo:block>
            </fo:table-cell>
          </fo:table-row>
        </fo:table-body>
      </fo:table>
    </fo:flow>
  </fo:page-sequence>
</fo:root>

It has all kinds of capabilities for setting alignments, page sizes,
boundaries, and everything else.  You can include truetype fonts and
graphics.  The beauty is that you don't have to generate the FO syntax
yourself; since XSL-FO is an XML language, you can use XSLT to translate
from content-based XML to the XSL-FO syntax.

Thus, the only issue is to generate the XML output.  This is most easily
done by writing to an IFS file, but if those APIs seem to be too much work,
just write to a physical file and then use CPYSTMF.

Joe