John,
I've seen lots of suggestions here and all of them should be helpful, but all the possibilies can't be addressed in these few messages.
Look at this Redbook
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg242160.pdf. You'll see that there are scads and scads of ways to do what you'd like to do.
As I recall, you came to the i from mainframe and thus, you may be familiar with ACIFS. The i has all functionality of ACIFS with some enhancements for ease of use. Most of that is done with AFP print files. You may need to add PSF/400 to your system to drive high speed IPDS printers, but you don't need it to do AFP printing.
Nearly all the printer files that come shipped with the system are SCS. Note that you can add front and back overlays to SCS spool files by defining new print files or with OVRPRTF or simply by changing the spool file attributes. The spool file contents will still be printed fixed pitch.
You can do full page formating with AFP print files and you can include overlays, page segments, bar codes, graphs, the works. The spool files can be printed through IPDS drivers or via Host Print Transform to your HP or other PCL printers. The combinations are (nearly) limitless.
Have fun,
Dan Kimmel
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of jmmckee
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:55 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Forms printing
Forms are printed on plain paper using Lexmark printers and a custom programmed forms chip. I can see how to do most of this using a printer file.
Two issues. First is likely simple - printing a letterhead. Is that done using an overlay?
Second issue seems more difficult. The back of the form has plain text and a couple of database fields. The plain text, however, could be English, or it could be Spanish.
Not sure how to deal with the text, whether English or Spanish. Could just have the text as text. Could also read from a file and write to the form. But, there would be font changes to accommodate.
Then, there is the Spanish, with the different characters. What would be required to get the Spanish characters to print?
Why am I interested? I heard that Lexmark has discontinued the specific printer model used for this forms chip. Also, we have a lot of Xerox printers and it would be very nice if the form could be printed on those as well. I think it would be nice to be able to present an alternative to the expensive forms chip method. Besides, two other systems send forms to the Lexmark printers - HP and VAX. Be nice to highlight ease of use.
This is not a requirement. Our SA put his foot down (and/or in his mouth) years ago with the position that forms can't be done on the i. Of course, a year or so ago, the need arose to print barcode on specific lab orders. That was pretty easy. Involved part was getting the positioning and text "just so", and that wasn't hard, either. The SA ends up being the worst form of advertising for the i, with that attitude.
Any suggested reading?
John McKee
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