UK show unveils un-print report alternatives

HP Users ’99 displays OpenPDF, e-reporter to distribute reports

The ingenuity of the English was in evidence at HP Users ’99, where a pair of providers introduced products to help 3000s deliver reports over networks and intranets, sans paper.

The products, available this fall, let 3000 managers turn reports into files that can be read with Adobe’s omnipresent Acrobat reader, or displayed as Web pages. One entry is even being sold over the Web.

Bonnysoft (44.20.8877.4455), a new venture begun by Panorama Antennas IT staffer Christopher Jesman, is offering e-reporter 3000, a tool that takes print jobstreams and turns them into HTML files. The software deploys a Web-builder function through overlays, definitions of layouts for Web pages.

“This can give customers immediate benefit without a great deal of effort,” Jesman said of his product, which he’s selling for $499 per HP 3000 on a completely un-tiered basis. “There’s an instant saving, and you can rapidly put 3000 reports on the Web,” he said.

The software runs on HP 3000s running MPE/iX 5.5 and later, and the HP 3000 doesn’t need to be connected directly to the Internet. The pages that e-reporter 3000 creates can be transferred by automated FTP processes to any Web server. Jesman said his firm was distributing them over an NT Web server after a brief stint with the Apache Web server for the 3000.

A capture jobstream merges spoolfiles which the system manager designates with overlays. The overlays contain specifications covering colors, font sizes, header and footer text, background graphics, logo size and positioning, link buttons and rules. The overlay can also strip out report banners.

The FTP directives let an administrator send the Web pages with reports to multiple Web sites at once. “So long as your FTP can link out into the world, you can put the pages anywhere,” Jesman said.

The product was written for Panorama’s internal use, and then its documentation was beefed up for the commercial release and the product re-written as well. 3000 sites can download a fully-functioning demo version with a 30-day limit from the company’s Web site, www.bonnysoft.com. After 30 days the functionality is temporarily reduced, until a license can be purchased. A credit card transaction at the site can be used to get an activation key, or a standard purchase order can be used as well.

The advantage to using HTML to distribute 3000 reports lies in its flexibility. “Someone with a mobile phone and a palmtop can download reports on the road,” said HP regional marketing manager Emmett Hayes.

Opening PDF to MPE

Another electronic distribution standard made its way to the HP 3000 for reports, as OpenSeas launched OpenPDF at the HPUser show. The software works with reports that are output in PCL format, transforming them to PDF documents that preserve formatting, fonts and layouts and can be read with Adobe’s Acrobat reader. PDF has become virtually a standard for document distribution over the Web, with the added advantage of preserving font and layout choices.

OpenSeas (44.1865.744.656) created the product by porting the PCL-to-PDF product to the HP 3000. The software converts any PCL file on the HP 3000 to PDF, regardless of the package which generated the PCL. In London at the user show, OpenSeas’ Jason Smith said the software had been tested against the Fantasia forms product, and the company was discussing tests against Roc Software’s Formation and SMM’s Spinner, other HP 3000 forms packages.

The product surfaced when an asset management client in London needed to archive its 3000 reports as PDF files, and contracted to have PCL-to-PDF ported for use on the 3000. The PDF reports can be stored on CDs and distributed for far less than the cost of printing the reports.

The PDF format also opens up reports for new access. Users can employ the Acrobat search capability to find words or phrases inside the report. A table of contents can be added to the report for quick access to sections. And Web links and bookmarks can be inserted inside the PDF document, using the standard facilities of Acrobat and the “white characters” feature of PCL output.

“We will specify PCL statements that we will use,” Smith said, “and when you place them into your output they will come through as white space — but within OpenPDF they’ll initiate a URL or hypertext link to another page or Web site or another HTML document. The report will become a living document, with references to other documents.”

OpenSeas is also testing another module for the solution that handles standard MPE spool files. The OpenPDF Spool product preprocesses the spooler control characters before creating PCL, which can then be passed to OpenPDF for creating PDF documents from 3000 print jobs.

“We found out it would be useful to take anything from a spoolfile and preprocess it,” Smith said. “This opens up a whole new avenue for Powerhouse, Speedware or COBOL reports — we can pick it up and process it and place it on a Web site.”

Smith said OpenSeas is also working with HP to see how Samba/iX and Apache Web server features of MPE/iX 6.0 can be used with OpenPDF. “You’ll be able to set up disks on your HP 3000 and map from them from any Windows platform,” Smith said. “There’s possibilities there so you don’t have to transfer the PDF files off the 3000 at all.”

US prices range from $1,112 (for systems on the level of an HP 3000 Series 920) to $8,050 for a Series 997, with a 50 percent discount for second and subsequent copies.The software is also being sold and supported in the US by LARC Computing (650.941.9310).