Yes, I have had occasions where users modified data and claimed the 3000 was wrong, but its been a rare occurrence.
Once you have a methodology to get the spool files off to wintel, you can pretty much convert the data to anything you need.
The other advantage of the spool file copy out for use in Excel is you can forget the usual width limits of printed reports - we have some files up around 600 chars wide (1 customer per line, 20 product groups of sales, each with Sales$, cost, gp$, gp% , MTD, YTD, LYTD, etc), and no need for subtotalling on the 3000, as excel can do all that.
Unless your users have a full Acrobat suite, its messy to copy data out of a pdf for Excel loading.
FWIW, the default soft report delivery (ie if not printed) in Lawson's M3 ERP system is pdf, and they sort oof looked at me cross eyed when I said we want to get it into Excel. Eventually found a way to get .txt files, modified the HP copy-to-wintel program to pick these up from another source, and that works now too.
I seem to recall posting the HP source code (C) that copies spool files to posix once before, but if anybody is interested, sing out.
jp
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From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bob McGregor [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, 22 January 2011 9:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] Creating PDFs on HP3000
For myself, I would prefer PDF only because people change an excel doc and then say it came from the system this way and then takes time to determine they did it. It's at bit tougher to change a PDF doc and I rest a bit easier that it won't be changed... of course the excel doc option is good when someone needs to manipulate the data.
The other reason the PDF is nice is you can convert to PDF and email as well.
Finally, when we did it (multiple years ago, we were an HP3000 shop)
The idea of a listener on wintel to convert and then move to appropriate directory is a good one.
pdfcreator (referenced by Michael Anderson) does have batch conversion ability.
It won't however allow for clickable links in PDF... not sure txt2pdf does either.
-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Pitman
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 3:48 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] Creating PDFs on HP3000
Why create the pdf on the 3000?
Heres what we do to produce txt files suitable for importing to xl etc.
Nominate a spooled ldev as always suspended (74 in our case - arbitrary). Users can choose this device as their printer in their Menu, and all subsequent reports (until changed to another real printer ldev) will go to these device, and therefore NOT physically print. Some reports that are commonly used to import to excel have been modified to make headings tightly lined up with the data columns, and only print one page heading, to ease the import process.
Run a job on 3000 that every few minutes scans for spoolfiles for this ldev, copy them to posix space specific to 74(for generality), with the creating user and
account in the file name(eg mgr_stock_O12345.txt), delete the original spoolfile.
We use a product called Bullet Proof FTP Server on Windows - this provides FTP user/password secured access to directories . Last time I looked this was a bit hard to find, but was free in at least one version - it came out of Whisper Technology.
A scheduled program on the windows box (every minute!) FTP connects to the 3000. When it finds a spool files as above example, it checks for a windows destination dir of MGR_STOCK , and copies the file to it as O12345.txt, and deletes the 3000 copy of the file. The account name enables segregation of reports for different applications in our case. If the file is > 1MB(arbitrary size of your choice, designed to reduce network loads when the file is downloaded by the user), its zipped. It could as easily be converted to any desired form - pdf via cutepdf? It could aslo readily email the output to a user, given access to a mail server, and a way to develop the email address.
Users have a client to access the FTP server and obtain their .txt or .zip files
This has been running for at 10 years now, with almost no issues. Occasionnally a large file might hang ftp, but cancelling and restarting the copy usually fixed it. I have seen report selection errors produce 500mb txt files.
You might use several suspended ldevs for different types or groups of users. We run this on four 3000s in different locations, each with their own separate windows boxes using BP-FTP server. This means that users in Oz can run a report on the Houston or China system to the local printer 74, pause, connect their ftp client to the relevant ftp server, and download the report without having to print it.
The process also enables soft storage of month end reports , which can be very useful for comparative purposes, auditing , and general historical reference - we now have about 8 years of this information stored , with backups and CD copies. Much more compact than paper, and cheaper!
hth
jp
________________________________________
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jack Connor [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, 22 January 2011 8:04 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [HP3000-L] Creating PDFs on HP3000
Hi,
I know I've seen this discussion in the past and see that Lars made some suggestions regarding CCTL-PCL conversions.
What would be the recommendation for a tool to convert MPE spoofles to PDFs that would then be FTP'd down to a WinTel environment?
TIA,
Jack
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