Hey all,

We are heavily, heavily intertwined with old-school printing involving @SAY and ??? commands -- we send output directly to the printers that speak PCL (Printer Control Language). We even control tray output on our new Kyoceras that have finishers on them. In the PCL world, years and years have built a lot of code to format output. In the PCL world, one can boldface, italicize, and change text size by passing escape sequences with text. So, instead of just doing:

@ 1,1 SAY "This text is normal!"

one can say:

@ 1,1 SAY CHR(27) + "(s3B" + "This is BOLD!" + CHR(27) + "(s0B"

Very handy! We have more than a decade (and probably over 50,000 lines) of letter-generating code that uses straight printer output and these escape sequences to get the job done (we print thousands of letters a day).

Now, we want to use PDF. That will allow us to store letters, print in bigger batches, and maybe eventually even implement mail sorting software to scrub addresses and save postage. I have become a Postscript and PDF demon using GhostScript and other PS/PDF utilities. I can generate a PostScript file, convert to PDF, combine files, add overlays, etc.

But I can't get any formatting to go with my PostScript output. I can send straight text to a PostScript print driver and have that save as a .PS file, but no bold, italics, etc. Any character sequence I try to embed in my text just becomes a literal part of the text. In other words, I don't know how to talk to the PostScript driver the same way we have learned to talk to the PCL driver. Remember, this is just @SAY and ??? I am talking about here. I have no other way of formatting except to try to add something to the raw text and have the driver see it as formatting commands.

One option would be to find a PCL to PS converter. If anyone knows of a free one, I am all ears. Then, we could leave everything as PCL and just convert to PS/PDF after print jobs generate a file. But I would rather get full control over PostScript working. I know PostScript is a different beast from PCL, more a full language than a stream of text and escape sequences. But surely there is something I can embed in text and have the PostScript driver see it as a command instead of just text?

I know the right answer would be to switch these letters entirely to Word, or VFP reports, or a .NET engine. That would, quite literally, take me years (and generate hundreds of errors and bugs). We have hundreds of letter modules and tens of thousands lines of code. If I can just make the text formatting more modularized and make it speak PostScript as well as PCL, we'll be in business. Any help will be tremendously appreciated!!!!

Thanks,
JoeK