Re: RPGCGI - Convert HTML page to PDF

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I would have leaned to iText but they also recently changed their 
licensing model so that may or may not work, in addition to your 
experience with HTML to PDF conversion (I haven't tired it).

Depending upon how you create the HTML, the output to PDF can be easy to 
hard.  I use Java and FreeMarker for almost all of my web development, 
so directing the output to the servlet for HTML or to a PDF an then to 
the servlet for "printed" forms has always been pretty easy.  But if you 
are creating the HTML with RPG then I am unfamiliar with the mechanisms 
you have available to redirect the output stream.  Perhaps not so easy 
in RPG?

But, you have given me an idea of what to add to my Common Presentation 
on Open Source Report Writing Tools.  Let me know what you come up with 
but I'll see what I can do as well.

Pete


Aaron Bartell wrote:
> I have a customer that needs to take an auto insurance form that was built
> with HTML and convert it to PDF so it can be emailed to the customer after
> they write the policy.  The HTML is created and now I have been tasked with
> converting it to PDF.
>
> The main requirement is that everything must run on the IBMi which means I
> am looking for a Java tool to accomplish this most likely.  There are a
> number of tools out there (both free and commercial) and I am wondering if
> others have attempted to do this and what you ended up choosing for a
> solution.  Here are some of the solutions I am looking at right now:
>
> http://pd4ml.com  - very simple API and very inexpensive (around $150 US
> dollars)
>
> http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2007/06/26/generating-pdfs-with-flying-saucer-and-itext.html
>
> http://www.allcolor.org/YaHPConverter/
>
>
> Anybody have suggestions on what I have listed or other suggestions based on
> your experience?
>
> Aaron Bartell
> www.SoftwareSavesLives.com
>