Generate PDF from Postscript in Power Builder 12.5

Question

We have a automated process which generates Postscript files from the application and sends directly to the printer to print as PDF's. Client is requesting to change the automated process to Save the PDF and store it to save print costs! Does anyone have logic/code or functionality to generate PDF's? Any help is appreciated. Thanks

Answer 1

I'm not clear on why you think this is a PostScript question, unless you want to take the PostScript and create a PDF file from it.

I'm also a little puzzled by:

sends directly to the printer to print as PDF's

are you talking about a virtual printer here ? That is, something which appears as a printer but creates a PDF file from the PostScript ? It seems unlikely because I can't see how not printing it would save print costs.....

Basically I can't see where the PDF fits into the existing workflow.

If you are talking about a virtual printer, then I don't really see how that can be costing anything in print costs, if it is then that's an accounting problem really.

However, all virtual 'print to PDF' printers are simply a convenient means for users to create a PDF file from a PostScript program. All the printer port (and print monitor) do is capture the PostScript being generated and send it to a 'Distiller' application which is a PostScript interpreter capable of producing PDF as an output.

If you are capturing the PostScript already then you can simply send the PostScript file directly to the Distiller, you don't need to 'print' it.

I think it would be best if you could describe your existing workflow more clearly.

For what its worth, creating a PDF file is not a small or simple task. There are graphics libraries which will create PDF files (iText, presumably others) and of course Adobe Acrobat Distiller, Global Graphics's Jaws and Artifex Ghostscript can all consume PostScript and create PDF files.

If you want to write a PDF output module from scratch you should first get hold of the PDF Reference Manual. The current version is 2.0, but that's only available from the ISO and costs money. The last specification from Adobe was version 1.7 and is still available free on their web site. It'll be more than sufficient for your purposes.