[Info-vax] OpenVMS printing to PDF

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-05-20 22:14:41 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:

> But none or very few ways that works on *VMS today*.

You're quite correct, and particularly where operating locally on an 
isolated server and without the benefit of network connections to other 
servers and platforms.  Many folks do not have that restriction, and 
are interfacing with everything from LDAP servers to ERP systems to 
distributed databases.

> I read the original post as an question about what was available now, 
> and that was what *I* responded to.

What you were responding to was and is completely and abundantly clear. 
  That's never been in question.

> Listing 10 other ways that are available on all other environments 
> really doesn't help even if it is (well-) written using 200 lines of 
> text.

The way that you're solving these issues on that box is certainly 
workable for your needs, even laudable, but it's also not particularly 
relevant to somebody — Mr Munk — that was considering product creation, 
except as a threshold of the sorts of folks that have technical staff 
and that probably won't be interested in purchasing the PDF tool he was 
pondering creating.  It's also not something that's going to interest 
somebody that wants to acquire support for processing PDF files, rather 
than creating and maintaining local support.

> If we are discussing what would be nice to have in 5 years it would 
> have been another matter.

Which is what I *was* discussing, particularly some options and 
alternatives that somebody — Mr Munk — might want to consider when 
designing that PDF tool that he was referencing.

Now beyond the discussion of options and alternatives that would be 
useful for somebody creating a tool, would I like to see a web 
rendering engine in OpenVMS?  Yes.  A much broader selection of format 
and file conversion tools?  Yes.   The frameworks and tools provided 
with OpenVMS — all the effort that leads you to need to deal with PDF 
by adding pieces and parts and to then supporting those pieces — really 
should be upgraded, and PDF tools and web tools should not be a 
grafted-on features, but integral components of the base operating 
system.  You should be working on the things that make your application 
more distinct and more unique and more valuable.  Not working on 
generic features.  On OpenVMS, PDF is special and distinct and requires 
work.



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