PDF creation with AFP spool file?

[Bill Howie]

Can you tell me if the PDF creation tool on this site works with AFP spool files, and if so, does it just create a TIFF, then a PDF? Or does it create the PDF in such a way that indexing would be allowed? Thanks!

Bill

[jamief]

Re: PDF creation with AFP spool file?

Bill,
This will not work on AFP reports and yes it does create a tiff copy of the original document.



Jamie

[Bill Howie]

Re: PDF creation with AFP spool file?

Jamie,

Do you know of a way, short of purchasing one of the many utilities out there, to create PDFs from AFP spool files and have the ability to have some sort of indexing capability? I know there are many products out there (BVSTOOLS, etc.) that do this, but what do they know that I don't about how to do it? The ones that are free are great, but every one that I've seen has a TIFF file as the intermediate step, so there is no "text" per se' in the file when it becomes a PDF. Any advice? Thanks.

Bill

[jamief]

Re: PDF creation with AFP spool file?

Bill,

I have used/Purchased Bradley's tools and have always been satisfied with the support and the cost. If my budget were a bit larger I would look into http://www.rjssoft.com/ .

I have developed some nice HTML & PDF applications using RJS as the core.
(sending ASN to customers without EDI in place)

I have not use any of the CGIDEV applications to send PDF, I would if time permits look into their solutions (ITs free)

http://www-922.ibm.com/en?

Look for MMAIL
MMAIL uses BVSTools (Bradley's) tool to convert to PDF.

Please let us know what more you find out.
Jamie

[Bill Howie]

Re: PDF creation with AFP spool file?

Jamie,

Thanks for the advice. What we have is a need to archive documents such that we could "look" into them to find text if we need to. These are AFP documents created on our AS400.

I may look into the CGI method.

Bill

[jamief]

Re: PDF creation with AFP spool file?

Bill,

Its too bad you couldnt leave a text version of the document on the Iseries(in a file) with the name of the document on the IFS. its path...DATE ,,,,,,etc

Then use SQL on the iseries to search the text in this table and return a list of documents and their paths.


Then with this list show the documents to the end user.

Please let us know which solution you choose.


Take care
Jamie

[Bill Howie]

Re: PDF creation with AFP spool file?

Jamie,

Just wanted to let you know you guys have an awesome website here. I've been programming for going on 19 years now and am noticing that an alarming number of ISeries-related sites want to in some way "charge" for code samples, etc. It is refreshing to see the openness with which the code is supplied here. I've used the sample that reads an output queue and does something with the spooled files and I had it working on our box within an hour of downloading it.

After a brief break I'm about to get back to my PDF project. I've got an idea on how I will be setting up my archiving using the PDFs. After I get it working I will let you know how I did it. Thanks again for the great website!


Bill