Output Formats

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "J. Ryan Kelley" <ryan.kelley at trinitytransport.com>
To: "fplist3" <Filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 12:28 PM
Subject: Output Formats


> I'm in the process of attempting to convert a group of images into a 
> single
> pdf document.  The bulk of the files are standard image types that are
> easily converted.  One of the images is the result of a form command.  I
> basically do the following
>
> PRINTER FILE "/tmp/tmp1"
> FORM "formname"
> PRINTER RESET
>
>
> the file is created fine, but I need to know what format that file is in 
> so
> that I can pass the argument onto my conversion program.  Can anyone tell 
> me
> what format filepro uses for these output formats?
>
> Thanks in advance,

In your case it's PCL

You can use ghostpcl to convert it to pdf and retain all formatting, it'll 
look just like a print.

You can use "unpcl filename >outfile.txt" to strip out the pcl codes and 
translate the upper-ascii line drawing characters to plain ascii and be left 
with plain text, then several programs exist that can convert plain text 
into pdf.

You can prepend  PRINTER TYPE "nocodes"  to the above list of commands and 
the form will be generated as plain text in the first place.

ghostpcl might not exist on your system. It's gnu but it's not widely known 
yet and there are not a lot of binaries for every platform. I compiled it 
for SCO and your old box has it. I don't have either permission nor know-how 
to compile it on your Sun box. Try the command "pcl6 -h" , if it works then 
you have ghostpcl and you should be able to do the command "pcl2pdf infile 
outfile" where infile is the form and outfile will be created as a pdf 
version of infile.

unpcl is a little sed script I wrote that works equally well on the new box 
and you do have it. (reptmail uses it on every single email)

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
+++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++.
filePro BBx  Linux SCO  Prosper/FACTS AutoCAD  #callahans Satriani