[Info-vax] OpenVMS printing to PDF

[David Froble]

Interesting discussion.  I'm not sure where it's coming from, nor where 
it's going ....

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-05-18 21:50:18 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:
> 
>> Stephen Hoffman skrev den 2015-05-18 23:19:
>>> On 2015-05-18 20:31:44 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:
>>>
>>>> Stephen Hoffman skrev den 2015-05-18 15:39:
>>>>> On 2015-05-18 12:48:49 +0000, hancockrl59 at gmail.com said:
>>>>>
>>>>>> We are trying to eliminate printing/scanning in several areas of 
>>>>>> our company.
>>>>>> Does anyone know if there is a way to print directly to pdf via an 
>>>>>> OpenVMS print queue?
>>>>>
>>>>> OpenVMS barely supports Postscript, much less PDF.

Does any OS have built in support for this, or other things?  Aren't 
many of such things actually applications?

>>>> VMS certenly supports PDF creation, with the right tools installed.

The tool may run on VMS.  To say VMS supports the task implies that VMS 
has some knowledge of the task.  I'll strongly disagree with that concept.

>>> By that definition, OpenVMS also supports the SpaceX Falcon 9 option 
>>> for orbital processing, too.

I'll agree that VMS could be used on the rocket.  I won't go so far as 
to say VMS "supports" the rocket.

>> Do you have a link to the tool for VMS for that?
>> If you do, then yes it fits the definition.
>> If you don't, you have to explain a little more.
> 
> By your "if we add {whatever} then OpenVMS can do {whatever}.   If we 
> strap on a Falcon 9 <http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities, then the 
> OpenVMS server can go even further and faster.

True!  But does VMS have the engines, fuel, and such?  I think the use 
of the word "support" needs to be better defined.

>>>> VMS doesn't support any 3G programming language either, without the 
>>>> right tools (compilers) installed...

A compiler is just another application.  Now, the compiler ay need to 
have some understanding of VMS, but in general VMS does not need to have 
any understanding of the compiler, or most applications.

>>> Which is one of (many!) problems with OpenVMS, of course.
>>
>> And how many "other systems" comes with anything more then a C compiler?
> 
> Python, Ruby, Perl, php, tcl, all of what bash / ksh / tcsh / zsh 
> provide, probably a few others I've missed.
> Add in the (free) developer tools, and you get C, C++ and some other bits.
> Integrated support for Postscript and PDF and some of the Office formats 
> and for RTF, too.
> 
> This is the market that OpenVMS is increasingly now in, too.
> 
>>> Other systems do have native support for reading and writing of PDF 
>>> formats, and without having add-on tools.

Only if the tool is included with the OS.

>> One can also say that the add-on tools are in the base distro.
> 
> Or one can strap on a Falcon 9 and launch the server.
> 
>>> Basically, your view of OpenVMS and mine are very different.

Interesting statement.  I'm wondering what that view is?

>> Agree! I'm very practical oriented. I rather do something for the 
>> users then whine about, well, almost everything.
> 
> You can't do anywhere near enough, unfortunately.  None of us can.  
> That's part of why the projects and the complexity and the rest is 
> increasing, and why we're working with more and more tools and 
> techniques.  More and more is integrated, and the add-ons are 
> ever-larger and more capable and sometimes more complex.   It's also why 
> isolated AlphaServer DS20 boxes are scarce, too.   Those AlphaServer 
> DS20 boxes getting harder to work on, in comparative terms. Sure, 
> OpenVMS is as it ever was.  That's not good enough.
> 
>> If my users says "we want to create PDF files", I say "fine, there are 
>> tools for that, no problem. I'll fix your PDFs!".
> 
> Good on you.   That's unfortunately not something that's particularly 
> common, nor particularly affordable.  You're still in the market that 
> OpenVMS was, back in the 1990s or so.  Fun times.   But times have 
> changed, and other vendors now have equivalent or variously better 
> products, often cheaper, and using and selling and supporting selling 
> OpenVMS against those gets... difficult.  Can I load in PDF and 
> Postscript and Apache and the rest?  Sure.   Done that.  But then 
> compared with what else is available now, why should I?
> 
> Again: OpenVMS support for Postscript and PDF is poor.
> 
> 

Correction, decent tools for Postscript and PDF are not distributed with 
VMS.  At least in my mind an OS should have no knowledge of such tools, 
and therefore doesn't support them as such.  Now, if "support" indicates 
that tools will run on a particular OS, well, that's another definition.