Creating Pdf file in Powerbuilder

Question

Hi Friends,

I am new to powerbuilder. I got a assigement Create PDF file using Powerbuilder.

Answer 1

Use this tutorial.

Answer 2

Good Question - There really isn't an easy way other than finding a third party tool. I've tried the prior method mentioned and it does work but not without headaches and you are left with deployment headaches, deploying ghost script and having to make sure Post Script drivers are on the client.

I ended up trying many PDF converters, both free and paid, the one that worked most seamlessly was one that installed as a "printer" such as if you have Adobe installed on the PC, but you need to dynamically verify existence of the printer via RegistryGet and if it doesn't exist ask user to install or install it dynamically via code, and registry entries (not fun).

After several headaches mostly related to deployment issues I ended up going with a server solution, but it requires having a server that you can have a process (distiller) running that grabs post script files and distills them to PDF. I used a response window with progress bar, the PB app printed post script file to server location upon which the distiller grabs and converts. My PB app polls the server until it finds the PDF, or the user cancels whichever comes first. With a good distiller the process is fast (< 5 seconds) which was acceptable to our users.

Upon existence of the PDF, we'd attach it to an email and send via Oracle (mapi). This solution limits the requirements on client to post script driver which in most corporate environments is there, but you need to check it via Registry. Maybe there is a better solution out there since I did this last, around 2008.

fyi- I usually don't make vendor recommendations but will in this case because there was one that stood out in ease of use and quality, it was called PDFCreator which installs as a windows printer. It looks to be open-source right now but I recall that we would have had to pay to use it in corporate environment.

Good Luck.

Answer 3

Our organization used to use Ghostscript, but has instead moved to Amyuni.

Answer 4

What version of PowerBuilder are you using? The most recent versions have PDF capability built in (using Ghostscript).