By Chris Vavruska Copyright „ 2021
PDF Writer is an export only Babelfish translator that allows the conversion of Apple IIgs text files to a PDF Document. In case you didn't already know, the PDF file format is a computer independant format that allows a document to be displayed looking the same on any computer with a PDF viewer. The PDF file that is generated by PDF Writer is not viewable on an Apple IIgs, since it currently has no PDF viewer. It is however viewable on more modern computers that do have a PDF viewer application. This allows documents created on an Apple IIgs to be seen as they were meant to be seen on many other computers.
In order to use PDF Writer you must have Babelfish installed on System 6.0 or newer. You can get Babelfish from http://speccie.uk/software/babelfish
In order to use the PDF Writer translator, copy the included PDF.Writer translator file to the :System:SHS.Babelfish folder of your boot drive, then reboot to allow Babelfish to recognize the new translator.
You will need a Babelfish friendly application such as the Convert New Desk Accessory included with Babelfish, or Spectrum. Please see their own documentation on specifics on using Babelfish. When exporting a document you will need to select "PDF Writer" as the exporter.
The PDF engine used inside of PDF Writer only supports the Helvetica, Times, and Courier text fonts. During translation, if any other font is found then the default font will be substituted. The default font can be changed in the export Options. The use of the Symbol and ZapfDingbat fonts are also supported.
From the Babelfish export file dialog you can setup the PDF Writer Options. The following options can be set to customize how your export document will be formatted.
**Default Font **- The font to use when the source document is using a non-PDF Writer friendly font. PDF Writer friendly fonts consist of Helvetica, Times, Courier, Symbol and Zapf Dingbats. The default is Helvetica.
Page Size - You can choose from the following page sizes: U.S Letter, Standard A3 or Stadard A4. The Default is U.S. Letter.
Line Spacing - The amount of space between lines. This is based on the maximum font size of the previous line, as well as the first font size of the current line. Choices are 120% or 145%. The default is 120%.
Margins - Specifies the top, left, right and bottom margins.
If a line only contains underscores, it will be replaced with a horizontal bar. There is no minimum or maximum number of underscores.
PDF Writer is open source and can be found at: https://github.com/vavruska/PDF-Writer/
PDF Writer contains the open source library PDFgen (https://github.com/AndreRenaud/PDFGen). It has been modified to work on the Apple IIgs. Most of the changes have been marked with #ifdef ORCAC. A large portion of it has been commented out since it does not apply to a Babelfish translator.
Unfortunately it is not possible to build PDF.Writer inside of the ORCA shell due to a 32K limitation in the resource compiler. If someone fixes or patches that defect then you can build it using the included build script. PDF Writer requires ORCA/C 2.2.0 B5 or newer as it includes the use of 64 bit integers.
The include makefile is used to build PDF.Writer using GoldenGate in a linux environment.