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  • 1.  Best Practices for Ascii -> PS/PDF -> Email AIX 5.3

    Posted Sat September 19, 2009 03:04 PM

    Originally posted by: SystemAdmin


    Dear AIX community:

    I am a long-time Unix/Linux sysadm that has to support a client using a new AIX 5.3 system.
    While I see that IBM offers the Linux Toolbox, I wonder whether any "old hands" here can advise of the best practice to work with the print subsystem on AIX 5.3 using the base IBM toolset.

    Specifically, the client wishes to be able to create a print queue/printer that takes a raw ASCII stream and converts it to PostScript / PDF and then writes to a file and/or emails it. On the Linux side I know there are tools to do this, but I am new to the IBM AIX printing system and it looks like there may be some "traps" to avoid. Does IBM provide an "Ascii to PDF" print driver? Are there particularly good documentation references I could consult?

    I am hoping for any pointers/best practices to solve this application requirement without the need to install additional Linux tools.

    Thank you for your consideration.


  • 2.  Re: Best Practices for Ascii -> PS/PDF -> Email AIX 5.3

    Posted Tue September 22, 2009 07:46 AM

    Originally posted by: l2abe


    I've not an answer for you but you can start by looking into this redbook:
    Printing for Fun and Profit under AIX 5L

    In this redbook you can find the basics about the AIX Printing subsystem.

    As far as I know, AIX natively is not able to convert ASCII to PDF or PS but probably you can play with the printer backend program using some opensource tool (eg: a2ps).
    Hope this helps...at least to begin.


  • 3.  Re: Best Practices for Ascii -> PS/PDF -> Email AIX 5.3

    Posted Tue September 22, 2009 07:53 AM

    Originally posted by: l2abe


    I found InfoPrintServer has a tool to convert to PDF...but I believe this is not a free tool:
    http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/printer/v1r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.printers.ipmwin/com.ibm.printers.ipmafp2pdf/ipr52mst11.htm


  • 4.  Re: Best Practices for Ascii -> PS/PDF -> Email AIX 5.3

    Posted Tue September 22, 2009 11:47 AM

    Originally posted by: SystemAdmin


    Thanks so much for the RedBook reference -- it is exactly what I needed and somehow did not find it.

    It looks like the baseline AIX 5.3 product does not provide a PostScript to PDF capability, but that functionality could be easily provided by creating a filter and using the two tools:

    1. enscript (allows creation of Postscript output from plain ASCII input)
    2. ps2pdf (converts PostScript to PDF) ps2pdf command line tool is part of the Ghostscript application - open source - and also available from IBM as part of the IBM Toolbox for Linux Applications available at: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/aix/linux/index.html


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