After updating from Clarion 9.1 to Clarion 11.1, saving to a PDF is extremely slow. A 50-page report (without images) takes about 4 minutes.
Does anyone have an idea what might be causing this?
Regards, Henk
Henk,
Have you checked and cleaned your temp folder?
Temp folder almost empty and I don’t think it has anything to do with deleting the WMF files. What I do is the following: I generate the report in a preview. Then I save it as a PDF (takes a long time). The preview is still on the screen. Then I close the preview. And that goes quickly.
Another thing I notice is the file size. 30 pages (text only) makes a 4292kB PDF. Printing the same report (30 pages) to the Microsoft PDF printer it takes only 455kB.
It’s not 10 times faster, it’s 10 times bigger 
I thought I had read somewhere that there’s a different (better) PDF engine that someone from the community contributed to SV. I wonder if there’s a place that you have to specify it. If I am steering you to look in the wrong place, I pre-pologize to you. But I don’t see any other suggestions yet. If this is the thing that is making it worse, then never mind 
The PDFs generated by the built-in report target class are bloated and very large.
You can programmatically print to PDF on disk with Microsoft Print to PDF printer driver.
Use PRINTER{PROPPRINT:printtoname} to assign the file name.
It is faster and generates smaller PDF files.
You do need to wait until the PDF is generated before using it.
I might be a bit out of touch with this process, but how exactly are you doing a “save to pdf”?
Are you using the standard Clarion report previewer, or some other 3rd party tool?
If I remember correctly the standard “generate a pdf” output from a Clarion report happens in the background and no user intervention is required?
Yes, if you are using the SV ReportToPdf global extension then you can select the engine there.
Worth doing.
It is amazing. I switched from “Clarion” to “Image2PDF”. The same report is now saved in 2 seconds. And the file size has been reduced to 179kB.
Thanks a lot Bruce.
One thing to remember with Image2PDF is the generated PDF text isn’t searchable or selectable. Each page is an embedded image.
I dont think thats accurate Rick. (I’ll check later if im near a PC).
The option to save the PDF as text, or a single image, is a different option.
I’ll update this answer later when I’ve confirmed.
Just did a test. Can search for words in the PDF and also select and copy parts of the text.
Ok. Maybe I don’t know what the Image2PDF option is??
I thought that was the save as single image option.
The “Image” being a WMF, not raster, might have thrown you off.
So there are two settings in play here. One can be set on the global extension, and overriden locally. The other is local only.
The global option (which can be overriden locally) is the “PDF Library”. The Clarion one is the class that has shipped forever. The Image 2 PDF one is a DLL which is an alternative.
The second (local only) option is “Scan Copy mode”. This turns each page (a wmf) into a raster image. If this option is on then the document cannot be text-searched (as you suggested).
The two options are independent of each other though.
Interesting. Image 2 PDF was new in 11.1.13768. I totally missed that.
Most of my projects use something other than the provided PDF generation.
Is the mentioned SV ReportToPdf an ABC only thing? Or is it a specific add-on?
Currently using PDF Tools from Tracker Software
If youre using Tracker then stick with that ic you can.
The SV Pdf engines are included in Enterprise Edition, and sold separately.
Hi all,
I am running into a problem using Image2PDF. I am adding a hyperlink to a report on-the-fly into a string (?PaymentRequest). This works fine with the standard PDF engine, but not with the Image2PDF engine.
The problem seems to be in the line:
SELF.Attribute.Set(?PaymentRequest,RepGen:PDF,TargetAttr:Hyperlink,MOL:URL)
MOL:ID = LOC:Token
Access:Mollie.Fetch(MOL:IDkey)
IF MOL:URL
report$?PaymentRequest{PROP:Text} = 'Pay me by Mollie'
report$?Paymentrequest{PROP:Hide} = False
SELF.Attribute.Set(?PaymentRequest,RepGen:PDF,TargetAttr:Hyperlink,MOL:URL)
END
Anyone an idea how to fix this?
Regards HenkAs an experiment, I wonder if you tried doing a SETTARGET(report) before the SELF.Attribute.Set Then re-set the target after that.