[Info-vax] Direct print of PDF files on PDF compatible printers.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2022-03-02, chris <chris-nospam at tridac.net> wrote:
>
> The reader is an application, either the free acrobat from Adobe, or in
> use here, the Foxit reader, also free. They do paid for apps that
> will edit exiting pdf files. Found that very useful where a pdf based
> form is to be filled in. Similar utils exist for unix, linux etc. The
> formatting for the printer is done within the app, and just talks to
> the printer via the os printer driver...
>

Everyone here knows about those utilities Chris, but what you are
missing is that you are assuming some manual process where people
manually open every PDF on a PC before manually printing it.

That is simply not how it works in many corporate workflows.

In many business cases, complex documents are created automatically by
a program (invoicing/statements, etc) and then printed automatically as
part of a batch run without any human ever been involved in the process.

I've actually generated barcodes in the distant past on VMS as part
of generating batches of documents automatically. IIRC, I did it by
generating PCL to draw the boxes on the documents and the documents
were sent to laser printers controlled by DCPS.

No third party utilities were involved. Code 39 (for example) is very
well documented:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_39

There are other encoding standards which are also well documented.
All you need now is to dust off your PCL programming skills. :-)

(Or these days, just use a printer with a barcode font. :-))

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.