David,
It sounds like you may be interested in options other than the traditional
printer file support in RPG, which as others have suggested might be paired
with IBM's PDF Transformation Services via the OVRPRTF or CPYSPLF commands.
My problem with IBM's PDF Transformation Services is that it performs
poorly and ties developers back to AFP, Printer and SPOOL files, which from
my perspective are terribly dated. On the other hand, I dislike APIs like
PDFKIT and PDFLIB because they are terribly granular. The alternative that
I came up with was to generate HTML stream files in the IFS with a simple
RPG API, then use an iText-based utility that transforms HTML and CSS to
PDF.
I like this approach because HTML and CSS offer such great standards for
document creation, tools for editing HTML templates and CSS files are so
nice, and educational resources for learning HTML and CSS are so great.
Plus it allows us to use essentially the same interfaces for both Web
applications and PDF reports.
In regard to the easiest way to create PDFs via RPG, we have a utility that
is part of a commercial product named Onepoint Portal and Developer
Toolkit, which provides a basis for web application development, which
includes PDF generation.
My company is a moderately successful ISV that has developed literally
hundreds of business applications for the public school market that are all
based on Onepoint Portal and Developer Toolkit.
I've written a few articles that introduce HTML to PDF transformation,
report generation, and transforming data-entry forms into PDF forms:
http://rd.radile.com/rdweb/info2/ibmiui13.html
http://rd.radile.com/rdweb/info2/ibmiui14.html
http://rd.radile.com/rdweb/info2/ibmiui19.html
If you're interested in discussing this privately, feel free to contact me.
We're not well established as an IBM i tool or application modernization
vendor, but we know what it takes to develop and deploy commercially
successful and modern applications for a very competitive market (public
schools).
Nathan.
On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 11:08 AM David Strawn <dstrawn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
What is the easiest way to create a pdf in RPG? Can pdfkit be used by an
RPG program?
David L Strawn
IBM i Developer, Information Technology
Florence County
518 South Irby Street
Florence, SC 29501
www.florenceco.org<http://www.florenceco.org>
843-656-2432 Office (x 62432)
843-679-5019 Fax
843-319-8101 Cell
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