I think Bruce was alluding to the fact that you are on C9 and have not upgraded to C10 then C11. SV can only remain profitable if those developers making money from Clarion support them. In my case I am retired now so it is just a hobby for me these days but for many years I used Clarion for my work, and so was happy to support SV by upgrading to the latest version, whether I needed it or not. (Of course I have no idea of your circumstances but please consider if you are making a living from using Clarion).
Re “extremely expensive templates”, in my mind most templates are “cheap” because they save you much time developing a solution (or in some cases may provide added functionality that is beyond your knowledge or abilities). Of course if you buy a template that is buggy and doesn’t work as intended that is a different matter, but in my experience most templates work “out of the box” and save you much time.
I agree that the SV pdf solution is not great. For that reason many years ago I bought a Tracker option called PDF-tools (which unfortunately is no longer available) that enabled printing from my apps with no need to install any drivers or anything else beyond the dll’s which formed part of my install. This is what Bruce was referring to by “Why choose a per-seat install and license, over a report-to-pdf engine, which is built into your program and runs everywhere?”.
Anyway I do hope you find a solution that works for your circumstances.
I’m sure it hasn’t. My point wasn’t whether the PDF engine changed or not. My point was that you complain about the progress of the tool, without providing any resources for that that progress to happen. You are of course welcome to not-upgrade, but don’t expect that not-upgrading leads to improvement.
You’re sending thousands of PDF’s a day, so you have a successful product. So you can afford the upgrade. And I completely get that people want value for money (I really do.) It’s not my job to shill for SV, so I won’t - I’m just saying that your complaint carries more weight when you are contributing to the eco system.
I presume you reported all this via the PTSS system, but even then things get prioritised, and I don’t expect this has made it far up the list. Personally I don’t use RTF, so the list is of no use to me.
I hope too.
I didn’t buy 10 or 11 because the problem I’m facing is only with RTF to PDF.
I’m aware of this PdfTools and went after it but it had already been discontinued.
The only problem I face is this, the rest within my little experience works very well.
Thank you..!
I can only change Clarion version if it assists me in solving the problem I face.
Had I stuck with 6.3, like the vast majority of Clarion developers, my needs would have been met.
I changed because I believed that the PDF had changed, I made the change without doing the test I did for 10 and 11.
If the list doesn’t make any difference to you, I don’t understand your participation in this post.
The problem remains, Clarion X RTF to PDF.
I believe that the biggest impasse of the suggested printers is that they do not convert WMF, they all generate an .eps.
ClawPDF does the same if you print directly on it, if from the SV report. Remembering everyone, I only use an external printer for PDF in reports that have the RTF component, because Clarions SV Report has errors.
The code I use is simple.
I call the report
someReport()
On the report
self.skipPreview=true
PRINTER{PROPPRINT:Device} = ‘ClawPDF’
PRINTER{PROPPRINT:PrintToFile} = TRUE
PRINTER{PROPPRINT:PrintToName} = ‘someReport.pdf’
I use this now to send to Microsoft Printer to PDF.
To use using eps, I have to change to
PRINTER{PROPPRINT:Device} = ‘ClawPDF’
PRINTER{PROPPRINT:PrintToFile} = TRUE
PRINTER{PROPPRINT:PrintToName} = ‘someReport.eps’
And after generating the PDF
remove(longpath(path())&‘\someReport.eps’)
The problem is that not all of them are removed, so you have to create a .bat to remove the surplus.
Hi Jorge,
In the current C11.1 the PDF output was updated to use as an option the external library Image 2 PDF (from Global option) and now it support anything that shows in the report, event none fonts as barcode or others and RTF or anything.
The original library didn’t supported font enveding but the new one does.
regards,
Diego Borojovich
I use it on a Windows Server 2012 for creating Clarion reports every night.
Just set it as the default printer on server and set your Clarion report to print directly to printer.
The created PDFs are tiny and the text on the PDF can be selected normally (instead of a image of the text).
Works like a charm!
hello
Thanks…!
It uses PDF Architect, it’s really great!
I have it on my computer for testing.
But it doesn’t install on some versions of windows.
Error installation. I’ve tried a few and it didn’t work.
But thanks a lot for the suggestion!
But other problems continue to follow the list
→ Final size of the PDF: 3 images were added with an average size of 150K and a text… the pdf was 4MB… it seems that the SV does not compress the image.
→ Bulets misconfigured and apparently Windows doesn’t recognize them, they appear as “?”
This persists in the Microsoft Print to PDF printer, I believe the problem is in the RTF template.
→ It takes time to generate the PDF
And the report does not deal with the transparency of the .png image… it would be of great importance to insert stamps in reports that have a colored background.
This image outlined in red should have a transparent background for the report’s watermark to appear.
I think PDF Architect isn’t really needed. It’s just the PDF viewer/editor…
Don’t know about Windows versions issues… I have it installed (an old version, not the current one) on a Windows Server 2012
Try converting those images from JPG to PNG, the compression used by the PDF format is similar to the PNG, and as I remember the JPG images were decompressed to bmp to store it in the PDF.
Having the images directly as PNG should help in the size.
If the test using the same images in PNG andJPG show the the size is better when using PNG, you can just use the ClaRunExt functionality to convert the JPG images on the fly before inserting them in the report.
Regarding the PNG transparency, it is supported in the PDF but some PNG have a sub format (trucolor or something like that) that make it not work, try using simpler PNG images, also remember is the image is open with Paint, then it loose the transparency.
Jorge, could be possible to post the WMF generated by the report with the images embedded?
I think that there is an option that the image2PDF is not using and it could be added to compress those images, but I have to test it.
+1.
The wPDFControl wrapper template is seamless to your program. It replaces the Clarion report viewer with whatever PDF viewer your user’s computer has, e.g. Microsoft Edge, Adobe Reader.
It’s fast. The template uses the PDF engine that many other software products use. See WPCubed. It uses compression so it also makes it small as well as fast.
(Of course a PDF viewer like Adobe Reader has many more features for viewing reports than the Clarion Report Viewer).
Another option you could use is TSplus. This is a hidden feature (it’s not in the knowledge base documentation or FAQs) of TSplus, which automatically sends your report to the client computer and opens the report as a PDF document using your local computer’s PDF viewer. It’s automatic so it’s pretty seamless, but it takes an extra step to be downloaded to your local computer. But then you are viewing it on your local computer and it will print directly to your local printer.
I had the same problem before for printing chinese character in pdf file.
I use pdfcreator 0.97 version, which you can in the script setting to change the output location and find out the pdf file. This method need to instaill pdfcreator 0.97 in each user computer, which is need more on-site user support.
Another method, which I convert the wmf into pdf file with Capesoft Oddjob to capture the output file.
Regards
Hello !
I changed the PDF manager to ImageToPdf, but the problems continue, I’ll send the images for you to see: 1 - System Screen
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