As well as spooled-file conversion to PDF files,
PDFing can perform a
number of other conversions. Once created, the output-files can be variously enhanced,
before being sent by email, saved to disk and/or printed.
When running PDFing without a
license,
please be aware that many of the features, as listed below,
will have (minor) limitations.
OS400 is the operating system for
IBM
iSeries® and AS400® machines.
V3R1 and later versions of OS400
includes all the necessary software for communicating with remote print-servers
over TCP/IP networks.
PDFing emulates a remote printer and exploits these OS400 capabilities.
PDFing does
not require the installation of any OS400 objects,
the only requirement is a TCP/IP connection from OS400 to the Windows
system that is running PDFing.
OS400 includes commands
STRRMTWTR and
SNDTCPSPLF
for
sending spooled-files to PDFing using the client (Line Printer Requester) side
of the LPR/LPD protocol.
The Line Printer Requester / Line Printer Daemon protocol
is part of the
TCP/IP protocols suite. This protocol
is defined by the Internet standard document
RFC1179.
Please note that OS400 can
only send LPR requests to port
515.
PDFing was built using
NetShare400
for AS400 and iSeries development and testing.
PDFing runs on a Windows PC and uses the server (Line Printer Daemon) side
of the LPR/LPD protocol to
receive spooled-files from OS400.
The Line Printer Requester / Line Printer Daemon protocol
is part of the
TCP/IP protocols suite. This protocol
is defined by the Internet standard document
RFC1179.
The implementation of the LPD protocol by PDFing is multi-threaded
and can service many LPR clients on many machines concurrently.
PDFing runs on all of the following
2003, XP, 2000, NT4, ME, 98, 95
versions of
Microsoft Windows®.
The only requirement is a TCP/IP connection to OS400.
Windows 95 users may need to upgrade TCP/IP to the Microsoft
Windows Sockets 2 standard. Search on
www.microsoft.com
for
WINSOCK2 to find and download this update.
OS400 SCS (SNA Character Stream) printer device files support the creation of
spooled-files that can be printed on simple line printers. SCS spooled-files
should
not be
transformed.
PDFing can convert *SCS spooled-files to the following formats:
PDFing includes EBCDIC to ASCII translation-tables for many
different
national languages
. You can use the
[System] page
of the configuration program to select the translation-table
that you require.
Conversion to PDF will operate without limitations only when you
purchase a license
for the base product. Otherwise PDF files converted from
*SCS contain a "reminder" image at the bottom of each page.
For an example file, please see
scs.pdf
When converting
*SCS data-streams to PDF, PDFing uses:
PdfLib v4.0.2 by Thomas Merz.
OS400 AFPDS (Advanced Function Printing Data Stream) printer device files support
the creation of spooled-files containing graphical images, bar codes
and multiple fonts. AFPDS spooled-files sent to PDFing must first
be transformed by the OS400
host print transform
function.
PDFing can convert *AFPDS spooled-files into PDF and other formats.
Conversion to PDF will operate without limitations only when you
purchase a license
for the base product. Otherwise PDF files converted from
*AFPDS contain only the first five pages of the spooled-file.
For an example file, please see
afpds.pdf
When converting
*AFPDS data-streams to PDF, PDFing uses:
Pcl2Pdf by Visual Software.
OS400 *USERASCII printer device files support the creation of
spooled-files that contain any printable data-stream. If the data-stream
conforms to PCL5 (Hewlett-Packard Printer Control Language)
then PDFing can convert it to PDF.
This type of spooled-file is produced by many form-creation products
for iSeries/A400, including Optio, Ezprint,
Formsmagic and Formsprint.
PDFing can convert *USERASCII/PCL spooled-files into PDF and other formats.
Conversion to PDF will operate without limitations only when you
purchase a license
for the base product. Otherwise PDF files converted from
*USERASCII contain only the first five pages of the spooled-file.
PDFing can automatically save each newly-created PDF file to a specfied directory
anywhere within the Windows file-system, using either
drive:directory or
UNC naming conventions.
You may also specify the name of the file to be saved. Where
a file of this name already exists, you can specify that PDFing
should rename the existing file before replacing it or, alternatively,
re-name the file to be saved by assigning a unique numeric suffix to the name.
PDFing can automatically send each newly-created PDF file as an attachment of
an email addressed to specified recipients.
PDFing can communicate with any mail server that
complies with the SMTP internet standard.
You may specify the name of the file that is attached
or send emails that contain only the names and (URL) locations
of any files saved to disk.
SMTP or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
is part of the TCP/IP protocols suite. This protocol
is defined by Internet standard RFC821 and extended by
standard RFC2554 to support authenticated conections.
PDFing implements the client side of this standard which is
used to send email messages to email server software. Almost all servers
(including Lotus Notes and MS Exchange) can receive and relay messages
conforming to this standard.
PDF documents are attached to SMTP email messages in the format described by the
MIME Internet standard RFC1521
and can be read by all modern email client programs, such as MS Outlook, Eudora,
etc.
PDFing supports
ESMTP authentication, for those servers
that require its clients to supply a user-name and password.
PDFing includes its own printing component. Please see our
Printing in PDFing
for more details about configuration and licensing.
When PDFing converts a spooled-file, the processing parameters are defined by
the
default configuration for PDFing.
You can also create alternative configuration files containing processing
parameters which override the default parameters, these files
are called
"markups".
The LPR standard is extended by OS400 so that spooled-file attributes are sent to
PDFing as well as the text to be converted. You may use native OS400 commands to
create spooled-files with certain
attribute values that
can
override the parameters that control how PDFing will process
this spooled-file.
The text contents of spooled-files can be analysed to determine where a single spooled-file
is to be
"burst" or split into multiple output
files. Each output-file can then be sent to a different destinations.
Destinations
can be directly selected from the text, or codes extracted from the text
can be used to select destination(s) from a
mail-list.
PDFing can create multiple copies of a single spooled-file, so that
each copy can be processed in a different way to the original.
The [Destination] page of the markup program
contains a new control labelled "Clone tags"
where "cloning" instructions can be specified.
The Portable Document Format (PDF) specification created by
Adobe Incorporated.
is one of the most widely used standards for electronic
document interchange. A PDF document always displays and prints correctly
on any device and, unlike a page of HTML, will exactly reproduce the original
fonts and pagination.
Document exchange using PDF is supported on many
different platforms (Unix, Linux, Apple OS/9, Apple OS/X, OS/2 and all versions of Windows).
The Adobe Acrobat® Reader program which displays and prints
PDF documents on these platforms is free from Adobe.
"Plug-in" software is also available for most popular e-mail clients
and browsers.
You may encrypt the contents of a PDF to password-protect it against inappropriate use.
A PDF document also includes information about the author and creation date
which can be used to check the validity of the data in the document.
For further information about PDF, please see "The Portable Document Format"
specification created by:
Adobe Incorporated.
You can protect newly-created PDF files from un-authorised operations
by encrypting the PDF file. You must specify one or both of the
"owner" and "user" passwords, "user"is required
to open the PDF file and "owner" allows operations such as changing
or printing an opened PDF.
PDF encryption will operate without limitations only when you
purchase a license
for both the base product and the additional NT Service components.
Otherwise the password(s) you specify are ignored and the password "Easy"
is used instead.
You can apply a "digital-signature" to newly-created PDF files
The [Security] page of the configuration and markup programs
contains new controls for specifying digital-signing parameters.
Please see our
digital-signature documentation
for details about configuration and licensing.
The text contents of spooled-files can be analysed
to determine both where PDF book-marks should be be added and the text
selected for each bookmark.
The appearance of a newly created PDF can be enhanced by
the addition of (up to 20) graphic images.You can set conditions for
the appearance of these images so that they only appear on particular
pages of a document.
The appearance of a newly created PDF can be enhanced by selecting
a different font family, appearance and color for selected regions
of spooled-file text. You may re-position the selected text and
and draw (colored) outlines around it. Up to 20 regions of
text may be selected.
Please note, only "un-transformed" *SCS spooled-files can be enhanced in this way.
Title, Subject, Author and keywords can now be written as
the "External file properties" of a file. These values appear
on the "Summary" tab of the Properties display and in the
appropriate columns of windows explorer. Please note that
these file properties are not included when a file is sent
via email.
The
[Convert] page page of the configuration
and markup programs contains a new control labelled "Add file-properties"
(just below the "Keywords" control), this must be set to YES.
PDFing can delay sending a PDF until all the spooled-files
in a set have been received and converted. It can
then merge all the spooled-files in this set into
one PDF document.
Each spooled-file in the set of spooled-files must have
a "send to destination" value specified as: *MERGE*sssss,
where sssssss specifies the set name. The last spooled-file
of a set must also specify an email address (or addresses)
as the "notify address" value. When the last spooled-file
of the set is received, all the spooled-files saved for this
set, will be merged into a single PDF document. This merged
PDF may be attached to an email sent to the "notify address",
saved to the disk location specified in the "notify address"
and/or printed.
PDFing can delay sending files until all the
spooled-files in a set have been received and converted.
It then sends a single e-mail, attaching all the files in
this set.
Each spooled-file in the set of spooled-files must have
a "send to destination" value specified as: *SET*sssss,
where sssssss specifies the set name. The last spooled-file
of a set must also specify an email address (or addresses)
as the "notify address" value. When the last spooled-file
of the set is received, all the spooled-files saved for this
set, will be attached to an email sent to the "notify address".
PDFing can extract the text lines from spooled-files and save them to a file.
You can opt to include or exclude form-feed characters and select the file-extension
as *.txt or *.asc
Conversion to Ascii Text will operate without limitations only when you
purchase a license
for the base product. Otherwise text files contain only the first
ten pages of the spooled-file.
When processing *AFPDS spooled-files which contain multiple fonts, some text may be
unreadable. This is because some fonts supplied by OS400 are encoded in EBCDIC rather
than ASCII.
The RTF specification published by Microsoft allows for the creation of
formatted documents that can be imported into most word-processing programs.
PDFing can extract the text lines from spooled-files
and save them as an RTF file. As far as possible, PDFing will preserve font-sizes,
indentations etc, in such a way that original spooled-file formatting is preserved.
Conversion to RTF will operate without limitations only when you
purchase a license
for the base product. Otherwise text files contain only the first
ten pages of the spooled-file.
Conversion to Excel requires you to create an "example" Excel file
which defines how a spooled-file's content is to be inserted into a spreadsheet.
Please see our
L4X page for
a detailed explanation of the process.
Conversion to Excel will operate without limitations only when you
purchase a license
for both the base product and the additional NT Service components.
Otherwise a comment is always added to the spreadsheet.
PDFing can archive any newly-created files within a single zip file
You may specify a password to protect the contents of
the zip archive. The zip-archive is then saved or emailed instead
of the component files.
OS400 provides this function which may be used to convert
*AFPDS and
*SCS
spooled-files to Hewlett Packard® Printer Control Language (PCL).
You can select this function by
configuring an output-queue
with the parameter values
TRANSFORM(*YES) MFRTYPMDL(*HP4).
You may specify other manufacturer type and models such as
MFRTYPMDL(*HP5SI),
or you can create your own
workstation customisation objects.
The data stream ouput from the transform must be in Hewlett Packard Printer Control
Language (PCL) at the level supported by LaserJet printers PCL4, PCL5 and PCL5e.
When using PDFing, *AFPDS spooled-files must be transformed to PCL. *SCS spooled-files
should not be transformed. Some of the advanced functions of PDFing
can only be applied to un-transformed spooled-files and the transform process
wastes OS400 and Windows resources.
Please note that the transform process removes all the spooled-file attributes,
excepting user-defined-text, file-name and user-name. However, we freely supply the
CL source for a special
transform exit-program
and if you
configure your OS400 output-queue
to reference this exit-program, then the spooled-file will be transformed when required
but all attributes will be sent with the spooled-file text.
Some *AFPDS spooled-files which contain "soft-fonts" may produce PDF files
which are not completely readable. This is because some fonts supplied by OS400 are encoded
in EBCDIC rather than ASCII. To make the text readable, go to the
[Convert] page of the configuration program and enter
the text:
-RA in the control labelled
"PCL Parameters". This parameter value causes the offending text
characters to be rendered as readable bit-maps.You can find out more about this
and other *AFPDS problems on our
F.A.Q. page.
PDFing cannot compromise the security of your OS400, your systems will only
ever send it data, PDFing itself will never initiate any OS400
transaction, it can only acknowledge the data sent by OS400 remote writer jobs and LPR.
The LPR/LPD Internet protocols that OS400 implements require that PDFing only send positive
or negative acknowledgments as data is received. Your system is thus protected against
problems with PDFing, the worst that might happen is that OS400 remote writers will
end abnormally.
You can prove this for yourself by using the OS400 command
NETSTAT *CNN. This will show a list of active TCP/IP
connections. You will never see the "remote address" of the PC running PDFing until
an OS400 remote writer writes a spooled-file to port 515.
In the same way, on the PC, you can execute
netstat -a
from the MS-DOS command prompt to verify that PDFing is listening on local port 515.
Execute
netstat -n to show the active TCP/IP connections,
you will never see the PC make a connection to the "foreign" address of your OS400
system until an OS400 remote writer sends a spooled-file.
You can expect conversion rates of a thousand pages per minute on a 133mhz PentiumŪ PC.
Actual figures may vary depending on any additional conversions you request and on the
number of graphic images to be added to each PDF file. There is a theoretical limit of a million spooled-files per session but customers have not
reported such extreme usage.
Bandwidth requirement varies by spooled-file type, *SCS requirements are very low,
about 2K or less per page, but *AFPDS requirements (particularly with graphic overlays)
can be (much) higher. Because *AFPDS requires OS400 to "transform" the spooled-file to PCL,
this transformation will take additional time, depending on the power and memory allocation
of your OS400 system. If converted spooled-files are to be sent as emails, then additional
bandwidth will be required for connections to the email server. The speed of this operation
depends entirely on your network and mail server software.
PDFing is multi-threaded and incoming spooled-file data from each connected OS400 writer is
processed concurrently.
Generally speaking, PDFing will spend a lot of time waiting for requests from OS400 or
responses from the mail server. Because PDFing is multi-threaded it can use this waiting
time to convert received spooled-files.
PDFing Features