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[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 16 May 2006]

Hello all. Thought I would ask this to see if anyone else has had any experiences in this area they would share.

We are in the process of revamping what we call our 'laser forms'. We use a 3rd party vendor to create an overlay document with the headings/logos/watermarks, which is put on a chip and installed into an HP Laserjet printer. (For some of the newer printers it is just downloaded to the printer.) We then print our forms such as invoices, credit memos, etc by coding the actual PCL in the COBOL program to set the font, size, etc, tell it which overlay to print, etc.

We are intending to move the majority of the headings/logos/watermarks to a file stored on disk on the host computer. When we print the form, we will still send the PCL commands to specify fonts, etc, but we will additionally read the overlay file and include it in the print stream sent to the printer, as opposed to having it printed from the printer's memory.

Thoughts, warnings, obverservations?

brad

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 16 May 2006]

Hello all. Thought I would ask this to see if anyone else has had any experiences in this area they would share.

We are in the process of revamping what we call our 'laser forms'. We use a 3rd party vendor to create an overlay document with the headings/logos/watermarks, which is put on a chip and installed into an HP Laserjet printer. (For some of the newer printers it is just downloaded to the printer.) We then print our forms such as invoices, credit memos, etc by coding the actual PCL in the COBOL program to set the font, size, etc, tell it which overlay to print, etc.

We are intending to move the majority of the headings/logos/watermarks to a file stored on disk on the host computer. When we print the form, we will still send the PCL commands to specify fonts, etc, but we will additionally read the overlay file and include it in the print stream sent to the printer, as opposed to having it printed from the printer's memory.

Thoughts, warnings, obverservations?

brad
Hello Brad

If you are using -P SPOOLER-DIRECT, I have no idea how it is done - but let me know if it is possible ;-)

If you are using -P SPOOLER, then it can be done using WINPRINT-PRINT-BITMAP.

BUT if you write something over the top of the bitmap, those parts of the bitmap will be erased. There is no "watermark" type function available with ACUCOBOL-GT.

This can be avoided if you use the WINPRINT-SET-PAGE-COLUMN with WINPRINT-TRANSPARENT set to TRUE.

I'm just as we speak trying to convert our programs from PCL to WIN$PRINTER, to get the ability to print .bmp/.jpg files.

Regards
Kim

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 16 May 2006]

Hello all. Thought I would ask this to see if anyone else has had any experiences in this area they would share.

We are in the process of revamping what we call our 'laser forms'. We use a 3rd party vendor to create an overlay document with the headings/logos/watermarks, which is put on a chip and installed into an HP Laserjet printer. (For some of the newer printers it is just downloaded to the printer.) We then print our forms such as invoices, credit memos, etc by coding the actual PCL in the COBOL program to set the font, size, etc, tell it which overlay to print, etc.

We are intending to move the majority of the headings/logos/watermarks to a file stored on disk on the host computer. When we print the form, we will still send the PCL commands to specify fonts, etc, but we will additionally read the overlay file and include it in the print stream sent to the printer, as opposed to having it printed from the printer's memory.

Thoughts, warnings, obverservations?

brad
Thanks for the thoughts.

We're actually just using a defined name in the config file defined as a pipe to the printer subsystem, so we're writing binary data directly to the print stream. (I think this is similar to -D SPOOLER-DIRECT, but we're under unix and I've never had any experience with that).

I'll let you know what I find out. Probably won't be for a while, I posted my message ahead of project start time so if I got any feedback it would be well before I start.

brad

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 16 May 2006]

Hello all. Thought I would ask this to see if anyone else has had any experiences in this area they would share.

We are in the process of revamping what we call our 'laser forms'. We use a 3rd party vendor to create an overlay document with the headings/logos/watermarks, which is put on a chip and installed into an HP Laserjet printer. (For some of the newer printers it is just downloaded to the printer.) We then print our forms such as invoices, credit memos, etc by coding the actual PCL in the COBOL program to set the font, size, etc, tell it which overlay to print, etc.

We are intending to move the majority of the headings/logos/watermarks to a file stored on disk on the host computer. When we print the form, we will still send the PCL commands to specify fonts, etc, but we will additionally read the overlay file and include it in the print stream sent to the printer, as opposed to having it printed from the printer's memory.

Thoughts, warnings, obverservations?

brad
Speaking of Windows spooler. There is a way to deal with the transparency issue. But you have to use the api directly.

Attached is an example that makes a font watermark.

build both .cbl files and execute ptest.

Note that this technology is coming in ACUCOBOL-GT too.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 16 May 2006]

Hello all. Thought I would ask this to see if anyone else has had any experiences in this area they would share.

We are in the process of revamping what we call our 'laser forms'. We use a 3rd party vendor to create an overlay document with the headings/logos/watermarks, which is put on a chip and installed into an HP Laserjet printer. (For some of the newer printers it is just downloaded to the printer.) We then print our forms such as invoices, credit memos, etc by coding the actual PCL in the COBOL program to set the font, size, etc, tell it which overlay to print, etc.

We are intending to move the majority of the headings/logos/watermarks to a file stored on disk on the host computer. When we print the form, we will still send the PCL commands to specify fonts, etc, but we will additionally read the overlay file and include it in the print stream sent to the printer, as opposed to having it printed from the printer's memory.

Thoughts, warnings, obverservations?

brad
We did something similar, before going over to winprint. We would create the "form" in WORD, and then print it to a shared (Samba) printer on the Unix server. We changed the spool script on the Unix machine, so that it went to a file instead of to the printer. This file was in fact in PCL. We had to strip off some characters at the top and bottom. Then we could print this file and thereafter anything else that we wanted on top of it on the page.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 16 May 2006]

Hello all. Thought I would ask this to see if anyone else has had any experiences in this area they would share.

We are in the process of revamping what we call our 'laser forms'. We use a 3rd party vendor to create an overlay document with the headings/logos/watermarks, which is put on a chip and installed into an HP Laserjet printer. (For some of the newer printers it is just downloaded to the printer.) We then print our forms such as invoices, credit memos, etc by coding the actual PCL in the COBOL program to set the font, size, etc, tell it which overlay to print, etc.

We are intending to move the majority of the headings/logos/watermarks to a file stored on disk on the host computer. When we print the form, we will still send the PCL commands to specify fonts, etc, but we will additionally read the overlay file and include it in the print stream sent to the printer, as opposed to having it printed from the printer's memory.

Thoughts, warnings, obverservations?

brad
Attached is a program that has a working model of a watermark.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 16 May 2006]

Hello all. Thought I would ask this to see if anyone else has had any experiences in this area they would share.

We are in the process of revamping what we call our 'laser forms'. We use a 3rd party vendor to create an overlay document with the headings/logos/watermarks, which is put on a chip and installed into an HP Laserjet printer. (For some of the newer printers it is just downloaded to the printer.) We then print our forms such as invoices, credit memos, etc by coding the actual PCL in the COBOL program to set the font, size, etc, tell it which overlay to print, etc.

We are intending to move the majority of the headings/logos/watermarks to a file stored on disk on the host computer. When we print the form, we will still send the PCL commands to specify fonts, etc, but we will additionally read the overlay file and include it in the print stream sent to the printer, as opposed to having it printed from the printer's memory.

Thoughts, warnings, obverservations?

brad
Will try one more time to attach the program.

If it does not make it email me. patty@icsprofessional.com

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 16 May 2006]

Hello all. Thought I would ask this to see if anyone else has had any experiences in this area they would share.

We are in the process of revamping what we call our 'laser forms'. We use a 3rd party vendor to create an overlay document with the headings/logos/watermarks, which is put on a chip and installed into an HP Laserjet printer. (For some of the newer printers it is just downloaded to the printer.) We then print our forms such as invoices, credit memos, etc by coding the actual PCL in the COBOL program to set the font, size, etc, tell it which overlay to print, etc.

We are intending to move the majority of the headings/logos/watermarks to a file stored on disk on the host computer. When we print the form, we will still send the PCL commands to specify fonts, etc, but we will additionally read the overlay file and include it in the print stream sent to the printer, as opposed to having it printed from the printer's memory.

Thoughts, warnings, obverservations?

brad
Thanks for the contribution to the forum.
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