pdf forms printing

[AIT- Mark Comins]

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, Enrique Arredondo wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "AIT- Mark Comins" <mtcomins at delta.aperion.com>
> To: "Rod Caddy" <rcaddy at pro-set.com>
> Cc: <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
> Sent: Monday, March 15, 2004 7:55 AM
> Subject: Re: pdf forms printing
>
>
> >
> >
> > On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, Rod Caddy wrote:
> >
> > > We have a project that requires a very quick turn around and fairly
> intense thought process.  We are writing a database for an insurance agency
> that will be printing policies.  What we want to do is scan the blank forms
> and then lay the data over the forms and print them.  We would pull the data
> from filepro and tell the appropriate forms to print.  Eventually, we will
> web enable the project but that is not at the top of the list of priorities.
> This is on a Windows NT network running a mixture of XP and Win98se
> workstations.  We have done a good bit of research on the pdf and fdf merge
> products and this appears the way we want to go.  I would appreciate any
> input you may have in this area.  We have 30 to 45 days to get policies
> printing.
> >
> > I would suggest you contact Spectra Colour Services of Vancouver, BC about
> > a product they had offered in the past called mkpcl.  Their phone number
> > is (604) 738-6112 and I believe they offer a UNIX and a Dos version of
> > this product.  We had used this to scan in insurance policies and had
> > filePro fill out the appropiate fields.
> >
> > We had used this process to both fax tif files and email pdf files to
> > their customers.  In UNIX we used enscirpt and ghostscript's ps2pdf script
> > file to convert the filePro output to a pdf.  I believe the same utilities
> > for are available in Dos or you could get a commercial pdf convertor for
> this
> > project.  Look at this link for suggestions on ghostscript.
> >
> > http://www.math.ucla.edu/computing/user_support/internet/www/ps2pdf.html
> >
> > Mark Comins
> > mtcomins at aperion.com
>
>
> Is PS the same as PCL ?  If I have a PCL file generated by filepro can I so
> ps2pdf file.pcl file.pdf ?
>

PS is not the same as PCL.  Ghostscript will convert a PS or postscript
file to PDF.  There are converters from PCL to PS but I have found they
lose some of the form's clarity.  Lately I have used another package off
the skunkware site called enscript.  I have a filePro print table called
enscript which we developed to work with that program.

Below is a sample script for UNIX.

PFPRINTER=enscript;export PFPRINTER

cd /tmp
/appl/fp/dreport filename -f output -s -u -p /tmp/$$.pcl
/usr/local/bin/enscript --margin=0:0:0:0 -B -e -p /tmp/$$.ps /tmp/$$.pcl
/usr/local/bin/ps2pdf /tmp/$$.ps

# There should be a $$.pdf file under the /tmp directory
# Clean up
rm /tmp/$$.pcl
rm /tmp/$$.ps

> Enrique.
>
>
>