[Info-vax] OpenVMS printing to PDF

[Thomas Wirt]

On 5/20/2015 9:39 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-05-20 09:11:55 +0000, Dirk Munk said:
>
>> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>> On 2015-05-19 23:23:48 +0000, Dirk Munk said:
>>>
>>>> Indeed a PDF tool can do that. But think of a billing program that
>>>> produces PDF output files. Similar to FMS, you first produce a PDF
>>>> form with named fields, and then you fill those named fields in your
>>>> application. When the form has been completed you write the pdf form,
>>>> as an individual form, or all of them as one big file, just as you

<Big Snip>

>
> Yes, FMS works, but it's a whole lot of work for what you get out of it.
> curses and ncurses and SMG and the rest are similarly workable for these
> sorts of tasks, and similarly involve some effort, too.  Though the
> results of text-only conversions and the effort involved with FMS or
> similar — even with the FMS forms designer support, whatever that widget
> was called — tends to limit the interest that most folks will have.
> For better control, you're headed toward emitting LaTex or such — or
> toward HTML5.  Or toward using any of the existing report-generation
> tools, or using platform-integrated Postscript and PDF generation or
> conversion tools, where that's available.
>

I think we may be making this way more complicated than it need be.  We 
have a home grown app that runs our company on VMS.  We already write PS 
files for printing so our receipts and POs and such look nice.  It is on 
our "some day" list to convert our PS receipts to PDF and email them to 
the customer.  That's all we need.  We want to do this in VMS where our 
programmers are comfortable.

That would go a long way for a lot of this.  I believe that this can 
already be done in VMS, but it requires the installation of several 
tools and may not be real straight forward.  it would be nice if there 
was a simple tool or command that would take a ps file and create a PDF. 
  That's all.

-- 

Thomas Wirt
Operations Manager, IS Dept.
Kittle's Home Furnishings
Indianapolis, IN