[Info-vax] OpenVMS printing to PDF

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Thursday, 21 May 2015 02:59:39 UTC+1, JF Mezei  wrote:
> On 15-05-20 19:13, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> 
> My take is a bit different. Original question was "can I redirect a
> print queue to generate PDFs so I don't have to change anything in my
> apps ?"  (aka: change a flag somewhere and built-in support for pDF
> create activated on queue).
> 
> The answer was NO.
> 
> But a few of us provided ways to accomplish this on current VMS. (EXEC
> symbiont and ghoscript seemed to be the common theme).  It looks like it
> wasn't the magic bullet the person wanted since it isn't as simple as
> turning on some flag in a queue definition. But it is currently the
> simplest way to achieve what he wants. But it requires coding the
> command procedure invoked by the symbiont which calls ghorstcript to do
> the conversion to PDF and store it.
> 
> Yeah, it would be simpler to invoke ghostscript at the same level as the
> app instead opf app submitting to a print queue. But that would require
> changes to the app routines/command procedures.
> 
> 
> > 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. 
> 
> Back to the CDA converters: The architecture was very interesting
> because you could "type" a file and the text would be extracted and
> displayed on a character cell terminal, or you could edit it in
> decwindows and get the full attributes. (and there was the CDA viewer
> (IIRC) app in decwindows as well.
> 
> This was a precursor to what OS-X has on its gui which allows the Finder
> to do previews of the content of various file formats (quicklook).
> 
> A similar framework for VMS would be interesting. Perhaps CDA could be
> use as a core architecture perhaps not.

CDA was indeed very intesting, to those who understood where it might
lead, along with the related stuff like DEC Document Interchange Format
(DDIF) and LiveLinks which could be used to easily link from one CDA
document to another, one application to another, one box to another...

But at that point in time, DEC HQ didn't seem to be interested
in graphical desktop stuff except in certain niche markets. Some product
developers knew differently, which led to e.g. VAXNotes with pictures,
but few people used its graphical capability.

Then CDA etc 'inspired' OLE in a more 'modern' OS. The useful ability
to easily process and/or view the text-only content without the
graphical stuff (and probably more significantly to MS, without the
matching application) fell by the wayside, in line with the company's
policy of continuous product and service improvement.

Water under the bridge. Lessons to learn?