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

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2022-03-02 kl. 19:37, skrev 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.
> 

Sure, I have worked with barcodes (and scanners, Zebra printers and
whatever belongs to that) since the 80's. No problem there...

We had JetForm on VMS (VAX) printing on LaserJet IV printers.
Worked very well. JetForm is not avilable today...

In this case I do not expect to have a printer that has barcodes fonts.

I do have the Python routine to generate the PDF page including
the required barcode (Code128, in this case) ready.

There are a few quite cheap Xerox (the prefered printer brand
at this site) that has PDF support built in.

Now just aiting for the customer to lok at their available printers...