(OT) Open source PCL to PDF converters?

[Bill Campbell]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2007, Fairlight wrote:
>Yo, homey, in case you don' be listenin', Bill Campbell done said:
>> 
>> My reason for wanting to go from PCL to PDF is to process plain text output
>> with printer control codes to set pitch to something other than the
>> default, then turn convert this to something viewable by people who don't
>> have smart dumb terminals that can display more than 80 characters.
>
>I have a nuts idea...I don't know enough about PDF to know if it's even
>feasible -at all-.  But...  Someone once told me they use the printer code
>table to generate different things than print codes.  HTML was their one
>example.  Is it possible to make a PDF printer code table wherein you can
>directly format it in PDF language to begin with, just by using a different
>printer definition?

PDF (and PostScript) take a simple thing, ascii printing with a few control
codes, and turns it into a graphics problem.

My accounting software prints invoices, generating PostScript output by
creating an ASCII file then running that through groff, but that's the
exception rather than the rule.  The sql-ledger accounting system does
something similar except they use TeX or LaTeX templates instead of groff.

At least with CUPSs and most open source software for *nix, Postscript
processing is considered to be the standard with CUPS providing the
translation from PS to different printer types.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
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