You can download a windows-installer file for a "light-weight" version of PDFing from here, or go to our main download page for the complete version of PDFing and its associated products. If you are upgrading from previous versions of PDFing, please refer to our upgrade notes.

Once you have downloaded a windows installer file, just double-click on this file to start the install process. When installation is complete, you will see a short-cut to PDFing on the desktop and a new option in the start-menu. Please note that both versions of PDFing will operate in "trial mode" until you purchase a license-key and apply it .

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. However, the download page contains links to the source and objects of some (optional) open-source OS400 commands.

PDFing runs on a Windows PC emulating a print-server. When OS400 jobs send spooled-files to PDFing, each spooled-file received will be converted to PDF and (optionally) to other file formats, including MS Excel. Files produced by PDFing may be saved to specified storage-locations, sent as email attachments to selected recipients and PDF files can be printed. PDFing can enhance spooled-file conversion by applying graphic images, changing fonts, adding book-marks and splitting or "bursting" into a series of separately addressed documents. You can review a full list of PDFing's features here.

PDFing on a Microsoft® Windows PC can be a server for a (reasonable) number of concurrent OS400 jobs on any number of AS400 and/or iSeries machines. PDFing can convert many thousands of page per second but performance will necessarily vary, depending on the speed of your systems. Customers have reported successful conversion of *AFPDS spooled-files containing 90,000 pages and *SCS spooled-files containing over 200,000 pages.

Please note that, when TCP/IP is installed with Windows Server 2000/2003 the TCP/IP Print Server service is automatically started. This service also listens on port 515 and therefore will not allow PDFing to run! Unless you are using this service to print files sent from UNIX machines, you can safely stop this service and change its start-up option to "manual". You can find out more about this and other problems on our F.A.Q. page.

When you have installed PDFing, you can start receiving spooled-files from OS400. You must first make PDFing "listen" for incoming spooled-files by by clicking on the [Start] button. You will then see each "progress-box" change colour from red to green. If you have not configured and started the email feature, the mail progress-box will not change colour. Once started and ready to process spooled-files the PDFing window will look (something) like this:

Then execute the following OS400 commands which first creates a spooled-file, then command SNDTCPSPLF sends it to the PC running PDFing:

DSPLIBL *PRINT

SNDTCPSPLF RMTSYS(*INTNETADR) PRTQ('PDFING') FILE(QPRTLIBL) JOB(*) SPLNBR(*LAST) +
           DESTTYP(*AS400) TRANSFORM(*NO) INTNETADR('nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn')

The value of the INTNETADR() parameter of the SNDTCPSPLF command must be the IP address of the PC running PDFing. You can get this address by running IPCONFIG from the DOS command-line of this PC or by examining the TCP/IP properties in the Windows [Settings|Networks] panel.

As PDFing receives and processes spooled-files, you will see the statistical counters and progress boxes change. After PDFing has received and processed the spooled-file, the PDFing window will look (something) like this:

Although the SNDTCPSPLF command is useful for testing purposes, for most applications it is much better to use a "remote-writer" to send spooled-files to PDFing. To use a "remote-writer", you must first create an output-queue, like so:

CRTOUTQ OUTQ(PDFING) RMTSYS(*INTNETADR) RMTPRTQ('laser') CNNTYPE(*IP) +
        DESTTYPE(*OS400) TRANSFORM(*NO) DESTOPT(*USRDFNTXT) +
        INTNETADR('nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn')

Please note the RMTSYS(), DESTTYPE() and DESTOPT() parameter values must be copied exactly as given above and that the value of the INTNETADR() parameter must be the IP address of the PC running PDFing.

The command STRRMTWTR OUTQ(PDFING) will start a "remote-writer" job that sends any spooled-files in the specified output-queue to PDFing. The writer job will continue to run until either OS400 shuts down or the ENDWTR WTR(PDFING) command is executed One you have started the "remote-writer", the following commands will create a spooled-file which will be automatically sent to PDFing.

CHGJOB OUTQ(PDFING)

DSPLIBL *PRINT

Please see our document Sending spooled-files to PDFing for further examples, including configuration for *AFPDS spooled-files and creating a "virtual" printer-device. You may also (sometimes) need to create your own workstation-customisation-object, in order to modify the default operations of the host-print-transform function.

To review processed spooled-files, click on the [Open] button or the [File|Open] menu option and you will then see a form containing a grid which has one row for every spooled-file processed:

Select a row of this grid, and use the [Properties] menu to view the output PDF or inspect the properties of the spooled-file that was converted.

Further information on revewing spooled-files is provided by the on-line help supplied with PDFing.

As delivered, PDFing provides initial values for the parameters that determine how spooled-files will be processed. If you want to change these parameter values to suit your own particular requirements, you may click on the main [File|Configure] menu-option to open the configuration form for PDFing.

For instance, if you want PDFing to send the PDF file by e-mail, you must use the [System] and [Destination] page of the configuration form to specify parameter values for emailing. Users outside the United States, may also need to adjust the translation-tables used by PDFing, as discussed by our national-language web-page.

The LPR protocol is extended by OS400 so that spooled-file attributes are sent to PDFing as well as the text to be converted. For example, if you execute the following OS400 command and then repeated the Run Pdfing processs, the newly created spooled-file would be converted and attached to an email sent to: recipient@thehost.

OVRPRTF FILE(QPRTLIBL) USRDFNDTA('EMA=recipient@thehost')

You can set a spooled-file's attribute values using the OS400 commands: OVRPRTF, CHGUSRPRTI and CHGSPLFA. The user-defined-data and user-defined-text attribute values may contain override parameter values, specified as a series of "tags" These override any parameter values set by the default configuration and "markup" files. They may, for instance, instruct PDFing to send emails to specified recipient(s) or to save files to a specified disk location.

The more advanced processing features supported by PDFing are defined by markup files. You may configure PDFing so that, depending on each incoming spooled-file's name, user-data and form-type a "markup" file is selected automatically. You may also specify the name of the "mark-up" file to be selected for a spooled-file using OS400 native commands.

Please note that the transform process removes most spooled-file attributes and you therefore cannot use job-name, form-type, user-data and user-defined-data attribute values. However, we supply the CL source for a special transform exit-program, which allows all attributes to be sent.

PDFing can run as a "service program" on Windows NT, 2000, 2003 and XP. When running as a service, PDFing does not requires any user to be logged-in, it logs errors (and other) events to the system event-log and allows both local and remote users to concurrently control and inspect spooled-files processed by this service.

The service client program: PDFingCntrl.exe must be run from the same directory as that containing the service-program: PDFingMailer.exe. It presents a similar user-interface to the "interactive" version described above, except that the PDFing service itself cannot be started or stopped using this program.

The text of our last newsletter is available online at: http://www.pdfing.com/news/letters.html.

8th June 2009 - PDFing v4.0.0.23 released. See release history

7th May 2009 - PDFing v4.0.0.22 released.

6th April 2009 - PDFing v4.0.0.21 released.

26th March 2009 - PDFing v4.0.0.20 released.

26th October 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.18 released.

12th October 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.17 released.

20th September 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.16 released.

1st August 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.15 released.

1st August 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.14 released.

14th July 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.13 released.

19th June 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.12 released.

28th May 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.11 released.

15th May 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.10 released.

17th April 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.9 released.

29th March 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.8 released.

26th February 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.7 released.

14th February 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.6 released.

24th January 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.5 released.

22nd January 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.4 released.

14th January 2008 - PDFing v4.0.0.3 released.

18th December 2007 - PDFing v4.0.0.2 released.

26th November 2007 - Cost of NT service license-key increased to 299.00 USD.

1st November 2007 - PDFing v4 released. Please see our list of the new features in v4.

16th October 2007 - PDFing v3.1.0.16 released.

7th December 2006 - PDFing v3.1.0.12 released.

29th November 2006 - PDFing v3.1.0.11 released.

31st October 2006 - PDFing v3.1.0.10 released.

1st October 2006 - PDFing v3.1.0.09 (server.dll enhancement) released.

23rd August 2006 - PDFing v3.1.0.9 released.

1st August 2006 - PDFing v3.1.0.8 released.

6th April 2006 - PDFing v3.1.0.5 released.

27th March 2006 - PDFing v3.1.0.4 released.

16th March 2006 - PDFing v3.1 released.Please see our list of the new features in v3.1.

4th December 2003 - PDFing V3 released. Please see our list of the new features in v3.