Greg Chaplin wrote:

> > I am looking for software that will allow printing a form (logo bold
> > heading,etc) with data on LaserJet[s]. I have looked at packages
> > that create the form on a PC then upload to the 3K and create an
> > environment file that merges with the data at print time.  These are
> > overkill for what we want to do and the cost is prohibitive.
>
> A cheap, but not necessarily simple, way would be to use a mail-merge
> process with a PC word processor.

We've used this.  If you can create suitable tab-delimited files on the
3000 with the "fill-in" data, and your users are competent enough to
download the file and do the mail-merge (or spreadsheet import, or
whatever) it works quite nicely.  Fancy formatting on the Laserjets
(short of postscript and Wirt's QueryCalc) is difficult and cumbersome.

With that said, we also have a 3000-based forms package (Formation) and
evaluated Fantasia before they were renamed/resold to another vendor
(JetForm?).  Our primary purpose was conversion from a 2680 environment,
but we have since decommissioned our 2680 and dropped support on the
2680 components of Formation.  We have found new uses for Formation in
designing "on-the-fly" form overlays that were previously pre-printed
forms.  If you are of the "old school mentality" of using a forms ruler
and laying out COBOL print lines against the form, this works quite
well.  The PC-based form design package lets you specify the paper size,
number of columns and lines, then draws you a "grid" you can use to
layout the form as you wish.  It automatically picks a suitable font and
line spacing parameters, and handles bin selection/duplexing and other
odds and ends.

Getting this to work with serial *and* network printers then becomes an
interesting challenge.  In that arena, we are using both MPE 5.5 network
printers *and* 3rd-party (ESPUL) spooling depending on the task at hand.

Given all that, if you "can" solve your problems by downloading
intermediate data to the PC for formatting, you have a much more robust
formatting and printing solution (albeit a pain for high volume).

No <plug>s above, or lack thereof, was intended as any testimonial; just
our environment.  If anything, I intended to convey the absence of
a comprehensive/economical/efficient solution to your problem.

Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>