PDF printing with HP-UX

[ABC Unix]

Hello,

We have some applications that generate PDF reports. Currently these files are transferred to a Windows server to be printed but I'm trying to clean up the process by doing the print job straight from the HP-UX server.

My question is, how do I do this? I've looked online and all resources seem to state that I need to install Adobe Reader on the server. Someone in the office is telling me that there is another way that involves not installing it. Is that true?

Thank you in advance!

[OldSchool]

GNU Ghostscript should be able to convert pdf to postscript, which should work if you've ps printers.

The downside is you may have to build from source.

Adobe used to have Reader available on HP-UX. Unfortunately, the current releases aren't

[ABC Unix]

Yes I have PS printers. It's an application called GhostScript? I'll look into that.
I did download a tar bundle with Reader, must've been an old release then.
Thanks for your help.

[Michael Skora]

Hey there. I loaded Acrobat 5.0.11 and now I use a statement like:
cat "/pathname/filename.pdf" |
/opt/Acrobat5.0.11/bin/acroread
-toPostScript | lp -c -dlaserprinter
Best wishes.
Mike

[ABC Unix]

So other than Ghostscript and Adobe Reader are there any other potential solutions out there?

[OldSchool]

"Someone in the office is telling ...."

I don't know of any other way. Did "someone" from above, happen to mention how?

[Michael Skora · Accepted solution]

Well, I still like the "free" Adobe Reader 5 that you can get from here: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobatreader/unix/5.x/hpux-5011.tar.gz

Installs pretty easily. Honest.
Mike

[OldSchool]

as noted, reader is still available (see the link above).

the current version available for HP-UX is 7.09 (which isn't the latest). It lists the following requirements:

HP-UX
PA-8800 processor
HP-UX 11, 11i v1, 11i v2; HP-UX 11 users: GTK+ libraries 2.6.8 (required)
CDE Desktop Environment
512MB of RAM (1,024MB recommended)
Up to 330MB of available hard-disk space
Firefox 1.0 or later, Mozilla 1.73 or later

If you're only using it to filter the docs to a printable format (as shown in a previous post), then you may not need some of this (like the browser, cde and gtk), but I can't confirm that.

It will probably run on IA boxes under Aries, but I can't confirm that either.

To bad Adobe has seen fit to ignore HP-UX (at least it's later releases).

[ABC Unix]

Sounds like Reader is the best/only bet. Thank again for the help everyone.

[Dennis Handly]

>OldSchool: It will probably run on IA boxes under Aries, but I can't confirm that either.

I can do that but it took me hours to set it up because the IPF versions of the shlibs aren't in the hpux## directories. And there were config files with the shlib plugin names. And I can't run an IPF version of firefox at the same time, which almost makes it a non-starter.