Printing PDF documents from the IFS

[mnisgary]

I have a customer who has a PC application that generates PDF documents that are then stored within the IFS.
They now need a facility to print these directly from an iSeries application.

The documents are named in such a way they can be identified programatically, however, I have no idea how or even whether the PDF documents can be directed to an outq.

Has anyone done anything similar?

Thanks in anticipation
Gary

[T.Snyder]

One quick and easy way to do it would be to call Adobe Reader on a PC using the information in an article I wrote a while back, Calling a PC Application from RPG, Part II.

And you could call this command
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" /p /h c:\pdf1.pdf
to silently print the pdf; replacing the file name through the loop of command calls. You may need to change the path to the AcroRd32 command on the PC you are using.

And if you want it to go to an OUTQ, you could always set up a printer session on the PC that points to an output queue.

[mnisgary]

Thanks for responding but that's not quite what I want to do.

I have already given the users the ability to view the PDF in the way you describe and they can then manually print the PDF, however, what they want to do is select a transaction to print and the generated PDF be sent directly to the printer from the 400.

I would expect this to be achievable using AFP but can't find any pointers at the moment, other than this article which kind of implies it might be possible. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/iserie...4457751169.htm

[RingerSoftware]

Are your printers PDF aware? In other words, if you dump the raw byte stream to the printer, is it smart enough to print the document as a PDF? If yes, then OVRPRTF DEVTYPE(*USERASCII) and dump (open/read/writec/cose) it to a printer file like QSYSPRT linked to an OUTQ.

Chris

[mnisgary]

That's more like what I was hoping to be able to do. Unfortunately I'm discovering that there are multiple printers involved and not all of them are PDF aware.

I'm going to have to resort to the use of the switches on AcroRd32.exe, its just that its not particularly quick and I'm also having a problem where it keeps leaving the Reader application in the taskbar, albeit minimised, which the users can't cope with for some reason.

Thanks anyway.

[andreas.goering@web.de]

Hi,

if you need to use acrord32.exe in a "power" mode, means multiple print jobs within a short time you will learn that Adobe does not like it. The have products for power-printing....
We offer a solution "i4Print" that is designed to help in exactly what you are looking for.
The hole solution offers quite more then only to print pdf, in fact it is a also a form management, (just writing that here so you are not confused when you look to our website) see http://www.goering.de/en/i4print.html

Regards

Andi Goering

[richard26]

Hello Gary,

If you're interested in printing PDF files from the IFS, we have a Native iSeries PDF and TIFF utility product for spooling any PDF file for printing.

Feel free to contact me directly or check out our web site.

Regards,
Richard Schoen
RJS Software Systems Inc.
Where Information Meets Innovation
Document Management, Workflow, Report Delivery, Forms and Business Intelligence
Email: richard@rjssoftware.com
Web Site: http://www.rjssoftware.com
Tel: (952) 736-5800
Fax: (952) 736-5801
Toll Free: (888) RJSSOFT

[Guest]

You can do this (print PDFs on the i)!

You can use ghostscript to do this. Don't worry...it is pretty easy to setup. Ghostscript converts from pdf to pcl and then you send the pcl as *USERASCII to a print file that has been overridden to your outq.

I have successfully tested this procedure a while back and we will be trying to implement it in production sometime over the next couple of months. Follow the instructions here:

http://www.scottklement.com/archives/ftpapi/200903/msg00083.html

I can't find the command I used, but I didn't FTP to the file. I may have used PRTSTMF written by Scott Klement to dump the .pcl file to the outq. I can't seem to locate my notes and procedures but I loaded PRTSTMF in this same time frame.

Good luck.
Mike