Re: AFP spooled file to PDF Conversion -- MIDRANGE-L

I can second Richard's sentiment about the overlay not always lining
up. My AFPTOOL product also will show this from time to time and I've
worked with IBM about it and they keep telling me it's simply an issue
with the printer file specifications and or margins.

With the Host Print Transform API you can't really set the margins, so
if you create a document outside those limits, there will be issues
lining things up.

Like I said, I see this issue with about 10% of my customers as well.

It's also another reason I updated my SPLTOOL software so that you can
use it instead of AFPDS. What you can do is create the spooled file
with an SCS spooled file, then create your overlay into a PDF file and
place it in the IFS. Then you use SPLTOOL to convert the spooled file
to PDF and have the option to also add the PDF overlay to the
document.

The only downfall is the dynamic text (like your data rows and
columns, headers, etc... anything in the *SCS spooled file) will be a
courier font (Times is available too, but then you have issues with
proportional fonts and lining things up.. never fun).

The upside is you don't need to use AFPDS, and you can use color in
your overlay should you want to.

Feel free to contact me offline for more info on this. It's helped
many customers of mine.

Brad
www.bvstools.com

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Richard Schoen
<richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Michael,

I believe our toolset was one of the ones you looked at and had an overlay offset issue.

There is a common issue with Host Print Transform that will offset the overlay unless you tweak the overlay offsets when you generate your report.

This seems to only happen when you use Host Print Transform to an image based format and it's a long standing host print transform deficiency.

If you're on V6R1 and above you can use the transformation services to convert AFP files to PDF files as an option also where a 3rd party converter may not be needed.

Feel free to contact me offline to schedule a review if you're having issues with our converter and want to figure out how to resolve.

I believe most of the 3rd party tools use Host Print Transform to convert AFP to PDF.

Regards,
Richard Schoen
RJS Software Systems Inc.
Where Information Meets Innovation
Document Management, Workflow, Report Delivery, Forms and Business Intelligence
Email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site: http://www.rjssoftware.com
Tel: (952) 736-5800
Fax: (952) 736-5801
Toll Free: (888) RJSSOFT
----------------------------------------------------------------------

message: 1
date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:23:40 -0500
from: Michael Ryan <michaelrtr@xxxxxxxxx>
subject: AFP spooled file to PDF Conversion

Does anyone besides IBM do this well? I've looked at two vendors programs for doing this, and neither works well. I've been told that Infoprint is the way to go with this. Anyone know the cost of Infoprint for a P20 processor?

Thanks!

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