topic Re: Creating PDF on VMS in Operating System - OpenVMS

Creating PDF on VMS

Willem Grooters — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 05:17:15 GMT

I'm looking for a program to translate text files to Adobe PDF, running on VMS (native). It must be able to handle native VMS files - requirement of STREAM-LF is highly UNdesirable.
If the converion routine is callable from within another program, that would be an advantage. No cost (or very low) as well ;-)

Willem

Re: Creating PDF on VMS

Joseph Huber_1 — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 05:52:10 GMT

I don't know the price, but have a look at
http://www.sanface.com
They have txt2pdf and more.

Zero cost solutions:
http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/vmssig/src/c/txt2pdf.c

http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/vmssig/src/c/text2pdf.c

Re: Creating PDF on VMS

Joseph Huber_1 — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 08:07:25 GMT

Adding to the 2 programs above:

txt2pdf.c is of the Unix filter type stdin tetxt to stdout PDF. Does < > redirection internal.

text2pdf.c uses Unix style options:

text2pdf [options] [filename]

text2pdf makes a 7-bit clean PDF file (version 1.1) from any input file.
It reads from standard input or a named file, and writes the PDF file
to standard output.
There are various options as follows:
-h show this message
-f use PostScript (must be in standard 14, default: Courier)
-I use ISOLatin1Encoding
-s use font at given pointsize (default 10)
-v use given line spacing (default 12 points)
-l lines per page (default 60, determined automatically
if unspecified)
-c maximum characters per line (default 80)
-t spaces per tab character (default 8)
-F ignore formfeed characters (^L)
-A4 use A4 paper (default Letter)
-A3 use A3 paper (default Letter)
-x independent paper width in points
-y independent paper height in points
-2 format in 2 columns
-L landscape mode

------------

There is another prof. PDF generating software at
http://www.pdflib.com
offering also a free text2pdf in the PDFlib Lite distribution.

text2pdf - convert text files to PDF.
(C) PDFlib GmbH and Thomas Merz 1997-2004
usage: text2pdf [options] [textfile]
Available options:
-e encoding font encoding to use. Common encoding names:
winansi, macroman, ebcdic, or user-defined
host = default encoding of this platform
-f fontname name of font to use
-h height page height in points
-m margin margin size in points
-o filename PDF output file name
-s size font size
-w width page width in points

-----

So Willem, choose one.

BTW, although not using it very often, I think all 3 free programs handle different VMS text file format (var,stream).

Re: Creating PDF on VMS

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 08:16:27 GMT

I remember that I created PDF's with GHOSTSCRIPT 8.11.

Wim

Re: Creating PDF on VMS

Willem Grooters — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 08:32:42 GMT

txt2pdf.c is just what I needed.

$ cc txt2pfd
$ link txt2pdf
$ mcr txt2pdf < txt2pdf.c > txt2pdf.pdf

gave me a file that I could copy to PC (FTP binary) and acrobat 6 had no trouble at all.

Re: Creating PDF on VMS

Joseph Huber_1 — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 08:34:22 GMT

Wim, yes, but this needs then 2 steps from text to PDF: first format into a PS file (note: Ghostscript supports either PS or PDF as input), then PS-PDF.

Of course, depending on the text source, Willem may use some PS "pretty printer" for formatting
(like a2ps,c2ps,html2ps, ... name it), then Ghostscript PDF encoding preserves the postscript formatting, while the listed freeware text-to-pdf programs make simple files with no headings etc.

Re: Creating PDF on VMS

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 09:52:00 GMT

Joseph,

Right. I went from ps (vpa) to jpeg, pdf and finally to png. This because png file was the smallest and gave the most precise output (graphs to be included in word doc).

Wim