[Info-vax] OpenVMS printing to PDF

[BillPedersen]

On Wednesday, May 20, 2015 at 2:03:03 PM UTC-4, Thomas Wirt wrote:
> 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

I would think the most straight forward approach here then is the ps2pdf converter which is part of GhostScript...

     http://www.ghostscript.com/doc/9.16/Ps2pdf.htm