Jason writes:

> OpenPDF will convert PCL/Ascii files and convert to PDF format on the HP
>  e3000. Typical uses are to take output from products such as Fantasia,
>  Spinner, Startjet etc and produce PDF files. These files can then be placed
>  onto an Apache Web site on the HP e3000 or transfered to other web systems.

The following text has to be a blatant plug for one of our products in order
for it to make any sense, but PDF is one of those things that keeps lurking
the background that I have thought for a fair number of years that should
have real value to HP3000 users, but still hasn't quite caught on yet.

But as long as Jason brought the subject up, let me show a PDF file that Jim
Phillips of Therm-o-link, a frequent contributor to this list, sent me just
last week that he created wholly on his HP3000 (his fingers never having left
his terminal emulator), using <plug> QueryCalc </plug>, a spreadsheet-based
report writer. The PDF file he created is their company's product catalog.
With his permission, I put it up on our web server at:

     http://aics-research.com/pdf/catalog.pdf

I'm always tickled to show off what various people are doing on their
HP3000's. If nothing else, these examples help stir the imagination a bit and
helps dissipate the idea that the HP3000 is a requisitely stodgy device. I
think the interior pages of Jim's catalog are quite good looking. They're
clean and elegant. Perhaps more importantly, PDF is a file structure that is
easily e-mailed or put onto a web server, and it allowed me to print a
full-color copy out here on our local color laser, in duplex mode, just a
minute or so after I received it from Jim.

Jim didn't say how long it took him to put this catalog together, but I would
guess one or two days at the most. Nor do I believe that Jim is drawing any
of the information from his IMAGE databases, but that too would be entirely
possible. Indeed, he's putting out some really good looking invoices that
obviously do draw data from his databases.

We have a few other customers that also create their price books in
QueryCalc, drawing their current pricing out of an IMAGE database, but
unfortunately all of their sales catalogs are internally confidential and I
don't have any examples that I can show. Nonetheless, a catalog that draws
data from an IMAGE database is the kind of use that really makes this sort of
application shine. Because the entire catalog is nothing more than a series
of spreadsheet pages, those pages can be recalculated in batch, drawing
current prices from the databases, and printed out to a flat file in
PostScript that can be then converted ("distilled") into PDF, all done
without human intervention, a 3 o'clock in the morning, every night if you
wished, and then (using other products and services than QueryCalc)
automatically e-mailed to whomever you might wish or automatically
transferred to a web server.

Wirt Atmar