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create pdf files

From: brian@aljex.com (Brian K. White)
Subject: Re: PDF creation, again!!!!!
Date: 15 Oct 2003 21:58:57 -0700
References: <bmhlh9$vh3$1@news.securenet.net>
<3b6061-ms6.ln1@butthole.homeunix.net> 

"Walter Haslbeck" <news@badblocks.de> wrote in message news:<3b6061-ms6.ln1@butthole.homeunix.net>...
> > "ghostscript" to do this.  I was also told that I should be able to find the
> > "ghostscript" in my OpenServer 5.0.6 CD media kit, on the Skunkware CD.  I
> 
> Well, the Skunkware ghostscript is a bit out of date. Go to www.ghostscript.com,
> get the actual tarball and compile.
> 
> > had tried this and it resulted in a complete crash of my SCO OpenServer
> 
> I can't believe this.
> 
> > It has now be several months now and I have created a new SCO server for
> > this test.  Can someone recommend a PDF creation method (a la Windows Print
> > to PDF??).   I do not wish to use "ghostscript".
> 
> Well, there is e.g. pdflib (www.pdflib.com), which has a nice C API (but
> also bindings to a some other languages like perl,c++,tcl...).
> 
> Walter

I use this PCL to PDf converter, ghostpcl, a spin-off of ghostscript.
http://www.artifex.com/downloads/ (link check March 2011).



SCO OpenServer 5 binaries here:
http://www.aljex.com/bkw/sco/index.html#ghostpcl

Converts plain text simply by virtue of plain text being valid pcl
but also renders most other pcl into equivalent pdf (including
logo's/overlays)
basically, if you have something that prints to an hp laserjet or
compatible, you can print to file and pcl2pdf the file and get a pdf
version of it. This also means you can take a copy of sco's HPLaserJet
printer interface script and hack it a little so that it passes
everything through pcl2pdf and on to mpack or mutt or something to
make a print-to-email printer that does all the stuff for you.

It's not perfect. Although some pretty fancy stuff works perfect, some
pretty common & basic stuff does not. Most notably common pcl that it
chokes on:

<esc>(10U    ibm character set (aka cp437, aka VGA characters)

For nice lines & boxes, which on the other hand, you could just draw
with hpgl commands to get around this limitation

<esc>&l##P   set ## lines per page

There are other pcl codes that do work that can acheive the same
result, but this code is very common. for one thing, it's used right
in the stock HPLaserJet printer interface script in SCO going back I
don't know how many years.


I'm using it successfully to allow an application to have
print/fax/email/web options all working off the same output from the
app, meaning that the app can be coded a lot simpler by just
generating 100% pcl instead of having some things that print, some
things that fax, some things that email, some things that generate web
pages, and many of those being mostly duplicated effort.

for "fax" we happen to use vsifax which happens to be able to accept
pcl, but I beleive ghostpcl could be used to convert to whatever
hylafax likes (postscript?) You could just use ps as the universal
output in the first place instead of pcl, but more printers support
pcl than ps.

March 2011: Would you believe that just last week I sent a pdf file to a guy who does Windows support for his company and he couldn't open it? Wow!

You might be interested in Create syntax highlighted PDF and HTML files from C or perl.

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