Bob,
Let me also extend an offer to help with general development
off-hours, if you're willing to work with GPL libs for open development.
I'm sure Artifex will be happy to work out a commercial distribution
deal for their Ghostscript offerings. I've dealt with the GS devs on
many occasions for both the GPL Ghostscript libs and the XPS/GPDL stuff
for PCL, where I've found bugs. They are troopers in that regard. My
time is limited @home and I don't have time @work right now to devote to
co-developing something, but I could really use a PrintWizard product on
our RH server. HTMLDOC is far from a perfect solution, but it's getting
the job done right now. As Anthony has stated, I would rather have a
local app running on an existing server than go through the
hassle/time/expense of configuring yet another critical Windows machine.
We will be using it extensively company-wide so it needs to be a fast
and rock-solid solution from the power plug in the server it's running
on to the PDF being sent via sendmail. I'm sure your customers have
never had problems, but based on my previous experience with Windows
updates and service pack conflicts I can't take chances with something
like this.
A perfect example of why I don't care for Windows as a server; I've
been forced to hunt down a copy of Win2K3 SBS because FedEx has yet to
certify their shipping server app on 2K8. I came -> <- close to dumping
an entire shipping solution due to the OS version requirements and
availability tied on by a third party as large as FedEx. C'mon, how long
as 2K8 been out?! I've found one application, which I obtained back on
RH7.2, that does not run properly on RH ES5. I don't want to get into a
Linux/Windows argument, but the fact is I love Linux for core processing
and it'll take a major business upset for me to even consider moving
something as critical as global document gen to a Windows machine. I
have no quarrels with using Windows as a desktop OS or even as an
interim data processing platform as long as my approval stamp isn't on
it. :)
BTW, TRUSTPrice has retail 2K3 copies with 5 CALs for around $500.
They're legit copies, or at least mine is.
Regards,
GlenB
On 5/19/2010 1:15 PM, Glen Batchelor wrote:
Bob,
You don't directly use a printer driver to generate content for other
printers, so what you suggest is a little misleading. I understand the
Microsoft printing interface having done some coding myself. There are
drawing and publishing libraries out there that will do what you want and
produce vector or raster imaging depending on what output you're attempting.
You can then reformat that using other tools/libraries.
The Ghostscript libraries are very powerful and there are a lot of format,
or "device", output options included. The key with the GS/GPDL library is
that everything gets processed as vector graphics. It is, afterall, based on
Postscript. Bitmaps are not handled that well, so PCL output can get
bloated. The GPDL library is getting better for PCL2PS conversion, but it's
still not perfect.
I would note that your best success will probably come from generating
Postscript content in your tools and then leveraging the GS libs to output
PCL, inkjet, jpeg, etc output. I also suggest you stop by #ghostscript on
irc.freenode.net and chat with the devs if you're looking for a
Microsoft-like drawing and formatting library replacement. While it may be
off-topic, I'm sure someone will suggest a few options. There also is a user
and dev mailing list if you're not IRC-inclined. Don't forget about Tetex
and/or LaTex markup conversion possibilities too.
----------------------------------------
Glen Batchelor
IT Director
All-Spec Industries
phone: (910) 332-0424
fax: (910) 763-5664
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.all-spec.com
Blog: http://blog.all-spec.com
----------------------------------------
(]chomp[) for brevity
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