Index
This is a collection of FAQs and Howto on print management, PDF production and other things related to prints and IBM i: it wants to be an ever-evolving guide so I also invite you who are reading now to report, via the comments feature , cheats, misgivings and experiences about it.
On the market there are excellent tools for managing graphic prints that generally allow you to generate PDF, HTML, XML, XLS etc. and they also manage the flow for real document management.
But even with the tools available to the IBM operating system, you can do good things, both manually and automatically by code.
If we already have a spool in the queue we can open the ACS Access Client Solution print issue management and choose Download or View and Download. The same thing we can do with iNavigator.
If we want to automate the process and generate PDFs in some IFS directory it’s better to work a little bit on the code, let’s see some examples:
Here are some links to learn more about this:
The procedure is explained in detail to this link of IBM Support: Creating AFP Resources Using the IBM AFP Printer Drivers
In practice, once you have installed the appropriate AFP drivers downloaded from the RICOH site and properly configured the driver to get Overlay or Page Segment, it is enough to direct our printing of the PDF, Word or what we have for the fining, create a file .prn on your PC, transfer it to IBM i via FTP and generate the CRTOVL overlay object on our system.
I do not explain the process in detail because the IBM Support guide is clear and complete.
The code128 barcode allows you to create barcodes even with “embedded” a CR-LF for … but in order to “print” these special characters, you have to pay attention to the compilation of the printer file PRTF by specifying the option RPLUNPRT(-NO) in the CRTPRTF:
--------------------------------- Pgmdcl-s cr char(1) inz(X'0D');
dcl-s lf char(1) inz(X'25');
or Dcl-S CRLF char(2) Inz(x'0d25'); ... bcode?%trim(myvar)'cr-lf'%trim(myvar2); ------------------------------ Print file: A BCODE 30A 1 A BARCODE(CODE128 2 -NOHRI (-WIDTH .- A 007))
iPrt-FAQ-004: See spooled files with SQL?
Under the name DB2 for services we find a lot of features and views that allow us to monitor and control system objects … such as print files or print queues:
LECT - FROM QSYS2. OUTPUT_QUEUE_INFO
Example taken from RPGPGM.COM SELECT SIZE,SPOOLNAME,OUTQ,OUTQLIB,CREATED,USER_NAME,STATUS, PAGES,JOB_NAME,FILENUM FROM QSYS2/OUTPUT_QUEUE_ENTRIES ORDER BY SIZE DESC
Insights on:
Sometimes it can be useful to monitor a specific queue automatically to perform appropriate actions each time a spool file is added to the queue … here’s an old post on IBM System Mag “Automating Spool File Processing” that explains the whole process by creating a special DTAQ and then monitoring the same DTAQ.
If you send ZPL code to your Zebra Label printer maybe you could appreciate this preview service:
http://labelary.com/viewer.html
You can send ASCII (HEX) chars to a Epson-TM printes with ket TRNSPY keyword:
Here’s an example to cut paper
Ad esempio … il taglio carta a fine scontrino su una stampante EPSON-TM-m30
A R DK3113E2
A TEXT('CUT RECEIPT')
A 1X'1B691B40'
A TRNSPY
---
Roberto De Pedrini
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