Posted by Robert G laurin on August 08, 2008 at 14:15:34:
In Reply to: Re: Comet 32 posted by Grant Foraker on August 08, 2008 at 10:55:58:
PlanetPress is an impressive product.
Looks like it originally design to take PTR output (aka as boring 132 column reports) and convert them on the fly into a graphical nice looking format. Since then they added possibility of importing raw data and parse it into fields.
Works with reports, forms and even labels. Can handle multiple formats (aka many forms picked based on data) also does multiple pages printing (for a single record). Can do paper & tray selection, single side or duplex.
The real beauty is that all the final processing is handle by the Postscript Printer. You prepare your document, send it to the printer as a memory document (like a resident font) or even store it on a hard disk on the printer (recommended).
When you send your data, you just prefix it with a trigger (Postscript escape sequence) and throw raw data at it. We opted to use XML as a standard format for our data.
Building a Postscript document means you can mix fonts & graphics. The interpreter will even reformat paragraphs for you. It is amazingly powerful (and like any programmed device - can also be frustrating).
One of my client got a big Xerox 180 ppm with a "highlite color" option and now prints all forms and letterhead directly onto white paper along with the document text.
Been using it for close to 2 years now. It is easy enough to use that even operators can set-up the documents and maintain them.
For the purpose of this "on the fly mailmerge" I wrote a VisualBasic CometSpooler that is PlanetPress ready and allow re-printing of Comet spooler jobs with selected page range with preview & search capabilities (preview just the data - not the doc). This became required as many print jobs contained 50,000+ records (pages).
Each file can be a maximum of 1MB in length Uploaded files will be purged from the server on a regular basis.