If you've ever wanted an easy and native way to convert spooled files to PDF on your IBM i then SPLTOOL may be for you.

SPLTOOL has been around for over 15 years.  Over those years it's changed from a simple application to convert spooled files to text files to a full feature product that will convert *SCS and *AFPDS (with the addition of AFPTOOL) to PDF, HTML, RTF or text, thanks to the many requests of our customers.

SPLTOOL also has the ability to add an overlay to your PDF document.  This means you can digitally add pre-printed forms to your reports, invoices and Purchase Orders.

That means you can convert this:

To this:

The command would be similar to the following:

SPL2STMF FILE(FILE) JOB(123/USER/JOB) SPLNBR(1) FROM(*FIRST) TO(*LAST) TOSTMF(myfile.pdf) DIR('/tmp') OVERLAY('/tmp/overlay.pdf')                         

We specify the details of the spooled file we want to convert, a filename and directory of the PDF to be created from our spooled file, and finally the fully qualified path to the overlay we want to use.

Creating the overlay can be done with one of many tools out there.  It seems most word processing and text editing applications have a "Save to PDF" option.  And if not, you can use something like Primo PDF to convert anything you print from your PC into a PDF file.

This is just one feature of SPLTOOL that is often overlooked, but once a customer starts taking advantage of it, productivity and user satisfaction reaches a new level.

SPLTOOL also has an interface very similar to the Work With Spooled Files (WRKSPLF) command provided by IBM.  One difference, though, is that it has options for converting the spooled files and then emailing them, or FTPing them to a remote server, all with one option.  

The SPLTOOL interface also allows you to create user options, just like in PDM, so you can run virtually any command you want with the spooled file attributes there for you to use.

Brad
www.bvstools.com