[ILUG] PDF Creation

[Conor Daly]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 10:42:08AM +0100 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Liam Bedford thought:
> At 18:33 26/04/2001 +0000, Conor Daly wrote:
> >On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 04:52:36PM +0100 or thereabouts, Declan Grady wrote:
> > > Is there anyhting available which can run like a print server, but create
> > > PDF files, instead of producing printed output ?
> > >
> > > Thinking of an smb print server, for windows clients, with one HP printer,
> > > and one PDF-Writer -like printer.
> > >
> > > Whats the catch ?
> >
> >Yeah, did that.  May still have scripts lying around.  They'll be in the
> >ILUG archive though.
> >
> >#!/bin/bash
> >
> >loop:  #Does this work in bash?
> >for i in `*.ps`; do
> >ps2pdf $i > `basename $i ps`pdf
> 
> 
> hmmm.. will this ps2pdf program take stdin?

Nope.  In fact, it generates the output file itself so the output redirect
isn't needed.  The script should just read

ps2pdf $1

If you want to use it in a pipe, you'll need to generate a tmp file from
stdin and then ps2pdf the tmp file.

pipe or console?
if [ -t 0 ]; then
  # We're in a console here
  ps2pdf $1
else
  # Here, we're in a pipe
  # We need a temporary file here so something else can carry on
  cat > /tmp/input-file$$.ps
  ps2pdf /tmp/input-file$$.ps
  mv /tmp/input-file$$.pdf suitable/location/and/filename.pdf
  rm /tmp/input-file$$.ps
fi
 
> pdf:\
> :sd=/var/spool/lpd/pdf:lp=/dev/null:if=/var/spool/lpd/pdf/filter:
> 
> and in /var/spool/lpd/pdf/filter have:
> TMPFILE=`mktemp /tmp/output.XXXXXX`
> ps2pdf - > $TMPFILE
> cp $TMPFILE wherever (and rename it to whatever)

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

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