Re: printing style, font

[Jeff]

Hi,

Depending on your level of expertise, and time constraints involved I might
suggest that for an input as simple as line oriented reports would easily be
transformed into a custom designed report by way of rolling your own
PostScript.

Steps.

Pick a language to process the text (I'd even be comfortable with PostScript
parsing the input >:)

Pick up a copy of this
http://www.adobe.com/products/postscript/pdfs/PLRM.pdf

and optionally, this
http://www.rightbrain.com/pages/book-download.shtmlshould you need a
softer introduction.

Pattern matching or setting rules for fixed length record positions on input
would allow you to customise font, colour etc and you can draw your own
illustrations or borders.

Page overflow is quite simple also, store your coordinates and increment the
y axis as you scoll move down the page. check before incrementing y that y
will not exceed a comfortable margin, if it does then `showpage'.


Sorry for the non a2ps solution, but it's what I'd be inclined to do to gain
additional flexibility.


Jeff



On 6/15/07, Seth Rothenberg <address@hidden> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I searched the archive, found some stuff that's useful
> but not yet exactly what I am looking for.
>
> I have been charged with taking some reports that were designed
> to be line-printed in landscape (i.e., 132 characters wide),
> and magically get them into tiff in portrait format....so
> they can be viewed by a Medical Coder in another location.
>
> It's a good thing I believe in Open Source.
>
> I have been using a command like
> a2ps -1 -l132 -ooutput.ps  output
> then
> gs -sDEVICE=tiffg4 -sOutputFile=output.tiff output.ps
>
>
> What I get is very close, but needs fine-tuning.
> I need a document that can be viewed on the screen
> for doing data entry.    So, I need to make this report a bit
> easier to read.   Ideas:
>
> -bold  -  ( um, I found this in the docs, did it once, lost it....will
> search again :-)
> -interline spacing - makes it easier to pick out data
> (I saw something for this in the docs  for enscript, but I don't think
> that's a better tool)
> -eliminate all headers/trailers    (like --noheaders)
> -eliminate borders so font can be bigger   (have not found this yet).
>
> Switching font may be helpful, eg, an Arial.....but I haven't figured
> that out yet.
>
> I would appreciate any pointers to more detailed examples (on web or
> even a book).
>
> Thanks
> Seth