Help generating a pdf using VFP9 and Bullzip Pdf Printer

[Luiz Eduh]

Hello,

I need some help.
I currently have a vfp program that generates .prn files and puts them on a local directory on my c:\ drive. I was wondering if there's a way with code to automatically grab that prn file and convert it to a pdf file using bullzip pdf printer.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Bullzip pdf acts as a printer driver, not as a file to pdf converter. Sources are neither doc, docx, txt or any other input file format, they are what any application sends to any printer driver.

All I know about PRN is that it's the opposite, it's what a printer driver creates and normally directly sends to a printer in that specific printers language. So that is already a step too late for conversion to PDF with Bullzip PDF, a printer driver needs the input of printing, not the output.

So for using Bullzip PDF driver you have to go through a FRX report.

Foxypreviewer makes a different approach of PDF creation, it kind of acts as a printer driver using reportlistener events and a pdflib, but it also works on a FRX, of course.

If you create your PRN files by usng a report and setting a printer driver option to output to a PRN file, you haven't understood the meaning of the bullzip pdf driver. You use it instead of the other printer driver, you SET PRINTER TO NAME 'Bullzip PDF Printer' (or alike) and then print.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Googling more, I find a few PRN to PDF converters online, and besides that, this article:

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/prn-to-pdf-conversion

It doesn't contradict what I said, but says a PRN to PDF conversion is doable, if the PRN is containing Postscript. So it doesn't depend on the file extension, it depends on what's inside. PRN like AVI is a file extension which can contain very many different things. Nevertheless Bullzip has no file to pdf conversion option of any kind, it is a printer driver, not a file converter, it's no solution to your problem, if your outset is not an FRX but some code producing a PRN file directly.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Mike Lewis]

I might have misunderstood the question, but why not simply generate the PDFs from within your application in the first place? Just set the destination of your printing to Bullzip (or any other PDF driver) using SET PRINTER. Why do you need a PRN file?

Mike


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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Olaf Doschke]

He might have inherited a DOS application writing out a PRN file instead of using a report. Then he's bitten in converting that most probably very printer specific output into a PDF, Mike.

But surely you can tell more about the background, webuxer.

Bye, Olaf.