List Members,

I also have been looking at PDF solutions and just today came across a
site http://www.pcltools.com that has a PCL to PDF converter including
source. This might be something useful to port. I'm going to seriously
look at this.

John Zoltak
North American Mfg Co

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Glenn Cole [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 1998 3:53 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: [HP3000-L] Spoolfiles and PDF format
>
> Tim wrote:
>
> > What I want to do is capture spoolfiles and $stdlists from
> > the HP and move them to an intranet, and then put them in PDF format
> >  so we keep page breaks (or if HTML can keep page breaks, etc, that
> > would be fine as well).
> >
> >  I don't have the budget to buy 3rd party solutions.
>
> While the solution mentioned by Gregory Stigers (SF2HTML, free)
> appears
> to be best in this case, I'd like to persue the
> 3000-file-to-PDF-on-intranet
> topic for a moment.
>
> In this vein, Wirt wrote:
>
> > I would estimate that to do what you want to do will cost you $5000,
> at a
> > minimum, broken down into these segments: $1000 for a cheap,
> dedicated PC
> > running Windows 98, $400 for Adobe Acrobat, $200 for a terminal
> emulator
> > that can perform file transfers, with the remainder going to salary
> for
> > the person who will write (i) the code to convert your spoolfiles to
> > PostScript and (ii) the macros/agents/scripts to download the
> converted
> > files into the PC for distillation into PDF -- and (iii) then move
> them
> > onto your intranet server.
>
> I am fully aware that Wirt mentioned the PC only as a tool to perform
> the
> task at hand.  In the same spirit, I'd like to propose an alternative
> solution.
>
> The just-released Mac OS 8.5 includes a feature called "folder
> actions."
> This is a mechanism whereby adding an item to a folder automatically
> runs
> an associated user-defined script (written in AppleScript, the bundled
> system-wide scripting language).
>
> With this in mind, an environment can be created such that
> transferring
> a file from the 3000 to the Mac via FTP triggers a script, which in
> turn
> calls Acrobat to convert the file(s) to PDF, then transfers the
> results
> to the intranet via FTP.
>
> Without getting into the details, the price should be similar to what
> Wirt estimated (except that Acrobat is available for < $200 at
> MacConnection.com; also, FTP client and server shareware would be
> used instead of a terminal emulator, saving an additional $150).
> Mac OS 8.5 runs on *any* PowerMac or PowerPC-based PowerBook.
>
>
> I was thinking that a Linux solution may be even less expensive,
> except that Adobe's web site does not include Linux in the list of
> UNIX machines supporting Acrobat.
>
>         < http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/prodinfo.html >
>
> --Glenn Cole
>   Software al dente, Inc.
>   [log in to unmask]
>
> ......................................................................
> .
>
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