[Info-vax] OpenVMS printing to PDF

[Dirk Munk]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-05-20 13:32:57 +0000, Dirk Munk said:
>
>> What I would like to see is this:
>> 1. A PDF form is constructed with some kind of PDF editor, no need to
>> do this on VMS.
>> 2. Some kind of utility extracts the field names and field properties
>> to a Fields File. This can be a VMS utility, and it could check the
>> validity of the fields and produce the type of file we need. It could
>> also be able to produce files with field definitions that can be
>> included in application sources, for instance a file with fields that
>> can be included in the Cobol Working Storage.
>> 3. A callable utility (similar to PDFtk) opens the PDF form, the
>> application fills in the data fields, calls the utility to transfer
>> the contents of the data fields to the form, and then writes a page of
>> the pdf file.
>
> An HTML5 template is created, with Javascript or other embedded
> scripting code that queries the database or otherwise fetches the data
> from the data source or from the URL or from the POST data, and where
> the local HTML5 rendering tool can then generate the completed form into
> a buffer, and where the rendering tool then generates the PDF from that
> HTML5.
>
>
I don't think Javascript is the ideal tool for implementing business 
rules in an application.

An application is not about fetching data, but also about generating 
data. A billing program generates data from other data, it will not only 
produce bills, but also update databeses etc.

I also see no need for a HTML5 detour and rendering process if it can be 
done with PDF directly.