Generating PDF reports

[Brian K. White]

That's essentially (though by a different route) what we do too.
hplaser print code table -> pcl2pdf -> htdocs -> browser

It's exceedingly convenient.

Though I have to point out that the fact that ghostpdl (the thing pcl2pdf uses)
is free is one of it's biggest down sides at the same times as an up side.
It's great and we use it extensively and it renders most filepro output pretty
well, but it's far from perfect. Images come out kind of, well, terrible. They work,
they just come out reduced to a very low quality rendition. I've seen a few other
rendering failures and oddities too, and we have simply decided it's easy
enough and worth our while to just avoid those problems. If a report turns out
to have a code that fails to render well in ghostpdl, we adjust the report.

Most ordinary filepro reports generated with the stock hplaser table work fine.
But I'm sure PrintWizard is a no-excuses solution where everything works.
I know it does a good job printing, which means it's pcl engine is good,
which is the hard part here. Not to mention PW has PWML and a ton of
fancy features. Not to mention if your PW is coming in the form of being part
of anziowin, then you get a truckload of killer stuff in anziowin too.

Aside from quality of product issues, there are logistics differences
to be aware of too. ghostpdl runs on the server and so every time any user
prints something, the server cpu & ram have to run ghostpdl to convert
the data. Where printwizard runs on the client, so the server does no
work and the work of rendering the pcl is spread out over each client
pc. So if your server is old and has a lot of users, ghostpdl may be too
slow and will also randomly fail to render some files.

-- 
Brian K. White    brian at aljex.com    http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR
+++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++.
filePro  BBx    Linux  SCO  FreeBSD    #callahans  Satriani  Filk!

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Tyler 
  To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 6:26 PM
  Subject: Re: Generating PDF reports


  pcl2pdf works like a charm on SCO OS6 for us.  We set it up as a filePro printer:

  /usr/local/bin/pcl2pdf - /usr/$LOGNAME/$MDYHMS.pdf


  We use facetwin, so we have another printer entry that outputs to a web directory with a command after that to echo an escape sequence to the screen that launches the workstation's browser by displaying the PDF URL (nicely negating the problem of having to know the path to the PDF app on the target machine, as well as being platform agnostic).

  Tyler


    Message: 1
    Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:30:19 -0600
    From: Greg <filepro at vltool.com>
    Subject: Generating PDF reports
    To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com

    I am interested in Generating PDF reports instead of generating printed
    output.  Has anyone done this with Filerpo.  I am using Filepro on Linux.

    Thanks for any suggestions.

    --Greg




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