To convert about 70.000 ascii documents into pdf format

September 1, 1999 - Reading time: 2 minutes

Kolberg Informatics used txt2pdf for a client to convert about 70.000 ascii documents into pdf format (batch job running under Windows NT on an Intel 200 MHz machine, elapsed time 72 hours). The conversion is part of a Y2K solution. Analysis reports (ascii) generated by non-Y2K systems in Pharmaceutical Development shall be available in a web/intranet application from the year 2000 on. The ascii docouments were parsed for index/search information that is stored in an Oracle database together with references/hyperlinks to corresponding pdf files, located on a web/intranet server. All processes/software/tools were validated because they are part of a GMP (good manufacturing practices) environment that might be inspected by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration, USA). Acrobat's pdf files are the perfect solution for viewing/printing formatted documents in a web application. Txt2pdf was exactly the tool we were looking for to do the job. The support by Sanface during the evaluation of txt2pdf was great.

"I think what I am doing is quite unique.
It would be of interest to those with ibm mainframes running os/390 unix.
I am converting an ibm mainframe reports with machine or asa carriage control to pdf format with txt2pdf. The reports are actually in ebcdic datasets. I wrote a small java program to convert the carriage control to ascii form feeds and newlines prior to using txt2pdf within a small shell script. The shell script runs under a TSO REXX exec in a batch proc step sandwiched between OPUT and OGET tso commands to get the reports in and out of the OS/390 unix file system. What was so surprisingly pleasing to me was that txt2pdf produced ebcdic pdf files under OS/390 unix. I then convert them to ascii pdf datasets in OS/390 MVS with the OGET command. They are then served up with the OS/390 webserver as MVSDS datasets with standard OS/390 security." (Vincent Gazzillo)