~~~~~RE: Preview of Print Wizard 4

[John Esak]

Wow, any and all of those options seem very easy.  I know people mostly just
use the PFPOSTPRINT.  Thank you so much for taking the time to do that.  I
hope when it comes out of beta you sell one to everyone on the list. Can't
think of anything more important to add to filePro than this product.  

By the way, one question. Just last week, my cousin at Wyckoff Lighting went
out and bought a printer without asking me anything. I was so afraid that
she bought a brain dead model. Happily, by complete accident she didn't.
But, being able to work with these other printers also seems to be a simple
dead-on reason to get PrintWizard.  I finally ended up buying a Laserjet
1518ni yesterday... It is just about the nicest HP I've ever seen... And
that includes the HP3's which were a monster 10 year printer... This thing
does PCL5c which means I could send it color from filePro. I would guess
your PCL5 interpreter might have trouble with the PCL5c (color sequences),
or would they work okay?  

Anyway, thanks again. It's obvious you put some time into this, much
appreciated.  (by the way, I'm not being picky, but assuming you're going to
use this again, you missed 14 through 18 in your Roman Numeral counting. :-)
I wouldn't have gotten that far...) 

John

P.S. - By the way the HP1518ni color laserjet is on sale at Staples for $250
instead of $399.  A hell of a eal. Of course, they could give away the
printer and still make money. A package of 3 cartridges (the color ones) is
going to be $195 and the black cartrige is $85, so God, the toner costs more
than the printer. They give you a set with the printer that will probably do
50 sheets.  I'll wait until that runs completely dry before I bite the
bullet and actually try and find the cheapest version of these things.
Incidetnally, I printed a full page copy of the Abby Road cover and holy
cow, it is beautiful. The printer puts a "sheen" or gloss over the color.  I
didn't ask for it, but it looks so good, just like the album itself.  I know
the Oki-data color printers do or did this, too, but it was always a very
garish gloss, overkill... This is very subtle and very effective.

Last comment. No CD came with the printer. Bah!  Had to spend a good while
getting the drivers for Windows. On the SCO, I obviously don't need
anything. Just pass the PCL5 through.  But I did load the PCL6 driver on
Windows... And there was also something they now call the UPD... Which is a
Universal PCL5 Driver.  This had a beautiful full featured installation that
let me make a printer that was fully PCL5  ready on XP (or up through
Windows 7), so my Windows filePro will work, too.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Rasmussen [mailto:ras at anzio.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 9:24 AM
> To: John Esak
> Cc: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
> Subject: Re: ~~~~~RE: Preview of Print Wizard 4
> 
> Thanks John, coming from you this is a high compliment.
> 
> Back in the day, people would ask me to "say something in 
> COBOL". Now I 
> guess it's "say something in filePro". Well I don't speak very good 
> filePro, but I think I can answer the question.
> 
> Let's assume you already have a program (report format) that prints 
> invoices, using a few printcodes for font control. Currently 
> it prints on 
> a pre-printed form on an Okidata dot matrix printer. Now we 
> want to route 
> that data to Print Wizard *without changing* the report design.
> 
> The first question is how to make the CONNECTION. You have lots of 
> options:
> 
> 1) fP on Windows -> PFPOSTPRINT -> disk file -> Printwiz.exe
> 2) fP on Linux -> spooler -> netcat -> Print Wizard listener -> 
> printwiz.exe
> 3) fP on Linux -> spooler -> remote printer definition -> LPD 
> -> Print 
> Wizard LPD -> printwiz.exe
> 4) fP anywhere -> write to disk -> PW despooler sees file -> 
> printwiz.exe
> 5) fP on Linux -> PFPT passthrough print -> AnzioWin (with most Print 
> Wizard logic built in)
> 
> Next is the issue of CONTENT - what's in the print data? In 
> the scenario 
> described, it's Okidata escape sequences. We'll soon be able 
> to deal with 
> those, not not yet. You have these options:
> 
> A) Choose a printer type that produces PCL-5 data, that lines up 
> numerically with the one you've been using for the Okidata. 
> Now PW will 
> receive PCL-5 data, and it can understand and translate (use) 
> that data.
> 
> B) Install the PRINTWIZ.PRT file included with Print Wizard into your 
> filePro, and use it. Printcodes will now become Print Wizard Markup 
> Language (PWML), which PW understands.
> 
> Now what about the OVERLAY (that is, the form background)? To 
> get started, 
> you can scan the existing paper form and save it as a .PNG file (JPG 
> doesn't work well for forms). When you set up PW, tell it to use that 
> file as the overlay. That's all! No messing with escape codes or hex 
> editors. You have other options for making forms also:
> 
> a) Build a form in Microsoft Publisher, and export it as an EMF. 
> 
> b) Build it in Excel and do a print-to-file with a PCL-5 driver.
> 
> c) If you have an existing electronic image of the form, do 
> print-to-file 
> with a PCL-5 driver.
> 
> d) If you have a PDF, Print Wizard can now use that directly.
> 
> e) Scan an existing paper form into Omniform, which will 
> recognize text, 
> lines, boxes, etc. Clean it up. Do print-to-file with a PCL-5 
> driver. (We 
> offer this as a service also).
> 
> f) Redesign the form by hand coding it in PWML.
> 
> g) Print anything to Windows printer driver, and capture the 
> spool file.
> 
> Put it all together, and you get your existing report output, 
> combined 
> with a form image, going to ANY PRINTER, even Windows-only printers.
> 
> BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! ORDER NOW AND YOU HAVE THESE OPTIONS:
> 
> i) Send output of PW to PDF and email it.
> 
> ii) Send output to fax, from faxmodem on client or on fax server.
> 
> iii) Use multi-page overlays (or multiple overlay files) in a 
> sequence.
> 
> iv) Adjust placement of overlay and report as demonstrated in 
> the video. 
> Save settings for next time.
> 
> v) Print three copies of each invoice, pulling from three 
> different bins 
> on the printer, each containing a different color paper. 
> Output can be 
> either collated or in sets.
> 
> vi) Handle situation where the old approach is to line up the 
> print head 
> part way down the page.
> 
> vii) Have PW translate Okidata escape sequences (soon).
> 
> viii) Preview all pages to be printed.
> 
> ix) Hand write on preview of pages to be printed. For 
> instance, sign a 
> purchase order on the screen on a TabletPC.
> 
> x) Print boilerplate data on the BACK of each page.
> 
> xi) Automatically staple each invoice set.
> 
> xii) Archive all invoices as PDFs.
> 
> xiii) Add attachments (of various formats) to print output, 
> with output 
> pages in proper sequence.
> 
> xix) Add attachments inside a PDF.
> 
> xx) Add attachments to an email (NOT inside a PDF).
> 
> xxi) Add attachments to a fax.
> 
> xxii) Print barcodes on any output.
> 
> I can see now that I have more explaining to do. Sigh.
> 
> ---Bob
> 
> On Tue, 10 Aug 2010, John Esak wrote:
> 
> > Wow! I'm impressed... But your stuff always wows me...
> > 
> > Would it be possible for you to explain what you did in 
> this demo in filePro
> > terms?. I know how to make an overlay. But, what are you 
> calling the report
> > data?  That is to say, it looked like a form's worth of 
> data. Would this
> > represent one record's worth of data for this form overlay? 
>   Are you saying
> > one record's worth of data needs to be dumped into a file 
> and then Print
> > Wizard works with the overlay file and this file of dumped 
> data?  Or , does
> > Print Wizard work with the filePro output format in any 
> way?  I'm sorry to
> > have no previous knowledge of Print Wizard and creating 
> overlays.  I have
> > always done these manually with the help of Jim Asman.  We 
> make an overlay
> > file of say the company logo, and static form content.  Put that in
> > something say called "form.ini" and then build a filePro 
> format as normal,
> > and this prints as normal with the overlay being triggered 
> as a macro. That
> > is downloaded to the printer ahead of the form data .  So, 
> we are only
> > inside filePro's report/form designer... How do we get to 
> use the nifty
> > graphical push and pull you show here?zxc
> > 
> > Did I say any of that so you could understand it Bob?  I 
> know I didn't.  I
> > guess what I'm asking is for you to talk me through this 
> demo using filePro
> > terminology if it is possible.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > John
> 
> Regards,
> ....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.
> 
> personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
>  company e-mail: rsi at anzio.com
>           voice: (US) 503-624-0360 (9:00-6:00 Pacific Time)
>             fax: (US) 503-624-0760
>             web: http://www.anzio.com
>  street address: Rasmussen Software, Inc.
>                  10240 SW Nimbus, Suite L9
>                  Portland, OR  97223  USA
>