PDFs

A PDF or Portable Document Format document (wikipedia:Portable Document Format) can be created with Business Rules! 4.2 and higher.

This is not the same facility as NWP. However it supports all of the NWP syntax with the following exceptions:

• Tiling and cross hatching are not supported. (colors and shading do work)
• NORESIZE is ignored.
• We are restricted to true type fonts only.

A couple of the more exciting characteristics of this new printing facility are the relatively compact output file sizes and the ability to overprint PDF forms.

This feature requires the PDFLIB.DLL to be present in the BR directory.

To create a PDF file specify in the print file OPEN statement: Name= PDF:/ [,PrintFile= ...] If printfile is not specified, BR creates a PDF file in the spool directory.

To create a PDF file and send it to the user’s Windows program associated with PDF files (such as Adobe Acrobat): Name= PDF:/READER [,PrintFile= ...] This is the same as creating a PDF file and then double clicking it.

To create a PDF file and send it to a specified program or batch file: Name= PDF:/program-name [,PrintFile= ...]

A background PDF file may be specified in the printed output as \Epdf='page_number,pdf-filename'. As with similar NWP escape sequences, \Epdf= is case sensitive, but the pdf-filename is not.

A CONFIG statement may override the default Windows PDF reader (typically Adobe Acrobat): PDF_READER adobe-reader-alternate This CONFIG statement causes BR to translate “Name= PDF:/READER” to “Name=PDF:/adobe-reader-alternate”.