PDF Printer

[mauro]

Hi

It used to be so easy to print on PDF with "PDF Printer", but I just installed it again and it is not working.
What are you using today to print as PDF?.

Hi Martin, my experience with the physical/pdf printer drivers installation has been painless and still works (very strange indeed in my case).
No cups installed, no additional/workaround services, just PM Printer Manager utility installed from Alex page

http://www.altsan.org/os2/printing/

and two drivers choosen from the available installation list: the PScript generic driver associated to my physical Samsung C460 printer, and a PDF Writer given by the PScript Apple Color LaserWriter 12/600.
I'm not sure if have made it too easy in telling, it was more than 1 year ago, just thinking that if it worked for me then it must work for everybody

[Sean Casey]

Now it seems to work with ghostscript 9.18-5 installed from ANPM. I just wrote it down here to don't forget about it next year.
http://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Remembering_How_to_Use_PMPDF

PMPDF was not working for me as I believe the documents I was printing were relying on fonts that were not available with the current ghostscript (v9.18-7) installed via ANPM.

I initially elected to manually install the prior version of ghostscript (v8.71) via a zip file and point PMPDF to this directory tree, as you describe in your tutorial.  This required that I uninstall v9 ghostscript without impacting CUPS which I use.  I used the "--nodeps" option to do this...

   rpm -qa | grep "ghostscript"

        ghostscript-fonts-6.0-1.oc00.noarch
        ghostscript-9.18-7.oc00.i686

   rpm -e --nodeps "ghostscript-9.18-7.oc00.i686"
   rpm -e --nodeps "ghostscript-fonts-6.0-1.oc00.noarch"

After getting this running, I decided it would be better to keep v.9 ghostscript in case it was needed for something in the future, but only use the Fonts from the older v.8 ghostscript.   So, I reinstalled v.9 ghostscript and copied the fonts directory from v.8 moving it under the v.9 ghostscript directory tree.  I then passed the v.8 fonts directory location to PMPDF using the "Extra parameters to GhostScript" option in the PDF output port.  The override option I used was:

   -lc:/@unixroot/usr/share/ghostscript/9.18/Resource/Font;c:/PSFONTS

See the attached screenshot for the location of the override.

So you can use either v.8 ghostscript without v9 ghostscript installed, or you can use v9 ghostscript with the added v.8 fonts directory and PMPDF override.

[Sean Casey]

Can somebody point me to some documentation on how to use CUPS to create a PDF Printer?

I use a PDF printer with CUPS on Linux, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to get this working with the OS/2 version of CUPS.  This same Linux CUPS PDF printer is also available via an SMB share, but the OS/2 version of CUPS is missing functionality to create the SMB printer to point to this printer. This is why I resorted to using PMPDF, but I would have preferred using CUPS, either locally on OS/2, or via my Linux CUPS PDF printer.

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

Sean, Martin, everyone...

...PMPDF was not working for me as I believe the documents I was printing were relying on fonts that were not available with the current ghostscript (v9.18-7) installed via ANPM...

So now that you've got it running, I am curious: what is the advantage of using PMPDF vs ePDF?

I've had ePDF working for a long time...and that included the transition from GS 9.04 (which is the last one I could print with using GSView) to the RPM GS9.18.

Anyways, ePDF gives you a pile more features to control your Document Info, etc...however, sometimes it's nice to just "push a button and get a PDF output", and for that ePDF is a bit cumbersome.

Does PMPDF provide that ease/functionality?

Looking at the readme that seems to be the case, but I would like to hear some real world feedback.

Also, re: ePDF, Martin, this goes back a couple of years, but if you still want that running let me know what info you need and I'm happy to share my config.

Thanks!

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Dariusz

I don't remember why I choose PMPDF, I guess because it was on netlabs, it's open source and was the first thing that I found when I have no idea what to do with CUPS.

Do you have the link to the latest version of ePDF? I want to give it a try, upload it to hobbes, and I will appreciate if you share your config and tips on how to make it work.

If it works for me I will also me a little article on the wiki.

Regards

[Guillaume Gay]

Hello *,

Latest post about ePDF from Franck Wochatz

https://www.os2.org/viewtopic.php?t=47

Bye *!

--
Guillaume GAY

[roberto]

Hello
With the PMPDF it has given me a problem, I no longer remember which one. But I can tell you to change the Appel driver for PSprint.Minolta-QMs Magicolor 7300. and without problems.
Saludos

[Martin Iturbide]

Hello *,

Latest post about ePDF from Franck Wochatz

https://www.os2.org/viewtopic.php?t=47

Bye *!

--
Guillaume GAY

Hi

The link posted there is not working.
http://subsys.de/epdf/download/ePDF299-4.zip
And it is also not archived. I can not find the file.

Regards

[Guillaume Gay]

Hola *!

OK. Let's try via another more recent (2021-01-11) link:
  https://www.os2.org/viewtopic.php?t=2769&hilit=ePDF
It's all ,auf Deutsch' but there's a download link to ePDF 2.99-6 on the first post (https://www.os2.org/download/file.php?id=1701).

Note that Franck can be contacted via Facebook, at least.  I don't see why he wouldn't want to see this gem uploaded to Hobbes.

As our German friends would say: ,Tchüß' .
--
Guillaume GAY

[Sean Casey]

So now that you've got it running, I am curious: what is the advantage of using PMPDF vs ePDF?

I looked at ePDF, but I wanted something easy to set up and use.  Easy to set up because there's limited OS/2 help available and I would probably be on my own to get it working as both ePDF and PMPDF don't appear to be currently supported. I know Steven Levine, a friend from SCOUG, is using ePDF, and Martin Iturbide had been using PMPDF.   

With PMPDF, I can use any application to print to the "PDF Writer" printer, like I would print to any other printer, and select the location where I want to save the PDF.  It's that simple.  If I want to change the attributes on the output PDF, I can modify the properties on the PDF output port where I can set the PDF Information - Title, Subject, Author, Keywords.

Using ePDF appeared to be a multi step process where I first print to a postscript file, then drag the file to ePDF to make the PDF file.  It's possible to print directly from an application to create a PDF file, but I would have to install other software, such as quePDF, to intercept the print job from the print queue/pipe and invoke ePDF.   

I only had to kill a few grey cells to get PMPDF working, so I'm happy.
 

[Pete2]

@Martin ePDF 2.99.7 is on Hobbes. I used it at one time, switched to pmpdf.

[christech]

I can’t seem to make PDFPrint work. When I print I don’t get prompted for a file name. Nothing is generated. I checked that CUPS and GS are installed and pointed PDFPrint to C:\use as the instructions showed.

[David McKenna]

Christech,

 PDFPrint does not prompt for a name - it just saves the file by default in /var/spool/cups-pdf/<USER>, then you can rename it. Make sure the 'AnonUser' key in 'C:\etc\cups\cups-pdf.conf' is set to an actual user name. By delault it uses 'nobody' which most likely is not a real user name - I set mine to 'guest'. Also don't use a drive letter if you try to change output directory for the resulting pdf in cups-pdf.conf - use '/@unixroot/use' instead.

Regards,

[christech]

I gave up on PDFPrint. I got ePDF up and running. Can't seem to print from Firefox but Lotus Word Pro and Ami Pro work fine. I am using the Apple LaserWriter 12/600 PS driver.

[Dave Yeo]

Hmm, printing from Firefox etc seems to have broken at some point. Should be able to print to file with PS or PDF. I'll look.