At <https://wi.wu.ac.at/rgf/diplomarbeiten/> you could select the keyword "PDFBox" to get at the
Bachelor thesis of Cristina Dobrea who had created nutshell examples in ooRexx to demonstrate how to
use that library to create and manipulate PDF files.
"PDFBox" is an open-source Java library from the Apache software foundation (ASF) and allows for
creating and manipulating PDF files, cf. <https://pdfbox.apache.org/>. As it is a Java library it
can be directly used on all operating systems that have the Java runtime environment (JRE) or Java
development kit (JDK) present (no need to port the library explicitly to different hardware and
software architectures by virtue of Java).
The PDFBox Bachelor thesis used ooRexx originally with PDFBox 1.x which got succeeded by PDFBox 2.x
with a new and incompatible set of APIs, such that I had to update the nutshell examples accordingly
(the reason why there are two zip archives present).
Currently there is a new Bachelor thesis in the works that exploits the new PDFBox 3.x alpha. Once
the thesis got approved it will probably also be placed on the URL above together with zip archives
of the new nutshell examples (like signing PDF files).
As you can see it is straight-forward to use PDFBox right from ooRexx as if PDFBox was implemented
in ooRexx and not in Java. :)
---rony
On 29.06.2022 18:00, Bob Bridges wrote:
For what it's worth, I've had that need. Only twice, I admit:
1) At one employer I overheard my boss talking on the phone; apparently they'd
been tracking viri by looking at firewall logs and analyzing connections that
had been refused. (A machine that sends 10 000 packets to one IP address is
probably fine; one that sends 1 packet to each of 10 000 IP addresses is a
virus looking for more victims.) But they were doing it by loading 2MB or so
of firewall logs into Excel, then sorting and culling and parsing; it took them
a couple of hours to do it each time. I downloaded Regina REXX onto my machine
at work and spent that amount of time writing a REXX that read the raw firewall
extract and created a CSV in about 20 seconds. REXX makes ~very~ short work of
parsing. At the time I don’t think I knew VBScript, but it surely would have
been harder.
2) A developer I know asked me to work out a way to turn his plain-text error
messages into a decent format for user documentation, in PDF. We worked out a
plan where I'd turn his plain text into RTF, then get Word to read the RDF and
write it out as PDF. (I don't know anything about PDF, you see. I didn't know
anything to speak of about RTF, either, but I found the specs on-line and
learned.) I tried doing that in VBS or VBA, but the parsing just got too hard.
That’s when I broke down and got myself a copy of ooREXX, which I had lusted
after ever since I heard about it but never had an excuse.
Turns out ooREXX has a lot of capabilities that I had to study up on before I
could use it effectively, so I took a day or two off to read and play. But it
works now.
Again, I see REXX's most valuable strength as parsing strings. Occasionally
that strength is valuable outside TSO.
---
Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313
/* A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can be learned in
no other way. -Mark Twain */
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
David Crayford
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2022 11:27
....I just can't see any use for REXX outside of TSO/ISPF.
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