The eqpcl utility internally translates the PCL command sequences and text into Postscript and uses GNU Ghostscript to create the PDF output.

Content:

• Command Line Options
• Using the eqpcl utility in an application
• Config File
• Limitations
• Virtual Trays
• Barcode Support
• PDF/A Support
• Third Party Licenses
• Changes

Prerequisites:

Creation of PDF documents depends on the GNU Ghostscript utility which must be present on the system.

Linux

GNU Ghostscript is is available from your Linux distribution.

HP-UX

GNU Ghostscript for HP-UX is available for download from the HP-UX porting center. GNU Ghostscript 8.71

Windows

GNU Ghostscript for Windows is available for from a number of sources, including: gs871w32.exe and gs900w32.exe

When running the install program, please consider to enable the option "All users" so Ghostscript is available for all users on the system.

usage: eqpcl [options] [pcl files ...]
output options:
 -help    This usage information
 -p       create PDF output (-pp for PDF/A)
 -s       create postscript output
 -a       analyze pcl data (-aa more verbose)
 -g       create postscript and pass to ghostscript
options:
 -c cfg   specify config file (default is eqpcl.cfg, ~/.eqpcl)
 -o out   specify output file (default is stdout)
 -m file  specify file with PDF marks
 -G opt   additional ghostscript options
 -V       output version and exit

If no configuration file is specified:

1. First, the eqpcl utility will look for a file named eqpcl.cfg in the current directory.

2. On HP-UX and Linux, the eqpcl utility will then look for a file named .eqpcl in the home directory (~/.eqpcl).

3. Finally, eqpcl will look for a file named eqpcl.cfg in the etc subdirectory of your Eloquence installation.

The option -o is used to specify the name of an output file. If not present, the output is written to stdout so that eqpcl may be used in a pipe.

The option -p is is used to create a PDF file as a result. In this case, eqpcl internally creates an intermediate Postscript result which is passed to Ghostscript to create the PDF. The option -pp is is used to create a PDF/A compliant PDF file.

The option -s specifies to create a Postscript output instead.

The option -a is used to analyze the PCL command stream. It writes its results to stdout. This option should not be used with the option -p or -s as this would result in a corrupted output.

The option -m specifies a text file containing PDFmarks. The file content is added verbatim to the postscript output. This allows to specify PDF meta information (such as title, author or bookmarks). This file must comply with the PDFmarks syntax. Please refer to the pdfmark Reference manual for details.

The option -g translates the PCL input and passes it to Ghostscript. This option does NOT create a PDF file but allows to use eqpcl as a simple frontend to Ghostscript (for example, to print the resulting document).

Any number of PCL command files may be specified on the command line, which are then combined to a single document, each file separated by a PCL reset. If no file name is present, the input is read from stdin. This allows to use eqpcl in a pipe.

Typical use:

eqpcl -c eqpcl.cfg -p -o sample.pdf sample.pcl

cat sample.pcl | eqpcl -c eqpcl.cfg -p > sample.pdf

eqpcl -a sample.pcl

• eqpcl may be used as the printer destination using a pipe. For example,

  PRINTER IS "|eqpcl -p -o out.pdf"
  PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
  PRINTER IS 8
  

  This creates the output file out.pdf in the current directory.

• As an alternative, eqpcl may be configured as a printer in the eloqcore configuration file. For example, the following .eloqrc file defines a printer 90 that creates a PDF document in the user home directory:

  PRINTER 90 PIPE "eqpcl -p -o $HOME/output.pdf"
  

  A simple program as below

  PRINTER IS 90
  PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
  PRINTER IS 8
  

  then creates the PDF document output.pdf in the user home directory.

• Create a PCL text file and use the COMMAND statement to create the PDF document. For example,

  PRINTER IS "out.pcl"
  PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
  PRINTER IS 8
  COMMAND "!eqpcl -p -o out.pdf "&MAPFNAME$("out.pcl.DATA")
  

  This first creates the output file out.pcl.DATA and then uses eqpcl to convert it to the PDF format.

Unless specified on the command line, the config file is searched in the following locations:

• The file eqpcl.cfg in the current directory
• The file .eqpcl in the home directory of the user (HP-UX and Linux)
• The config directory of the installed Eloquence release

Section [config]

ps.include = 

barcode = 1

overlay = 1

gs = /usr/bin/gs

On Windows, the default executable is gswin32c.exe, but the Ghostscript installation directory is usually not located in the PATH. Therefore, the gs option should be explicitly configured, for example: gs = C:\Program Files\gs\gs9.00\bin\gswin32c.exe

gs.paper.size =

gs.opt = 

gs.pdf.opt = -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer

gs.pdfa.opt = -sColorConversionStrategy=/RGB -sOutputICCProfile=srgb.icc \
              -sProcessColorModel=DeviceRGB -dPDFACompatibilityPolicy=1

gs.print.opt = 

gs.fontpath = 

include = 

ps.pdfa_def = 

Section [default]

paper.source = 1

paper.size = 26

  1 = EXECUTIVE
  2 = LETTER
  3 = LEGAL
  6 = LEDGER
 26 = ISO A4
 27 = ISO A3

symset = 4U

  8U = HP roman8
  4U = HP roman9 (same as Roman8 with EUR sign)
  9U = CP1252
  0N = ISO latin1 (subset of cp1252)

eolterm = 0

 0 - CR = CR, LF = LF, FF = FF
 1 - CR = CR+LF, LF = LF, FF = FF
 2 - CR = CR, LF = CR+LF, FF = CR+FF
 3 - CR = CR+LF, LF = CR+LF, FF = CR+FF

Section [tfN]

[tfN]
width = font height/width ratio (percent)
#b#s = font name

• The section name [tfN] identfies the PCL typeface. It consists of the literal "tf" and a numeric value N that specifies the PCL typeface id. For example, [tf4102] specifies the PCL typeface 4102 (LetterGothic).

• width specifies the font width/hight ratio (in percent). This is used to scale monotype fonts. The default is 60, indicating the width is 60% of the height.

• The other entries are used to map stroke and style values to a specific Postscript font name.
  #b#s = font name
  Where # specifies the stroke and style value and font name specifies the name of the PostScript font.

The example below maps the PCL 4102 typeface id to the LetterGothic PostScript font.

[tf4102]
width = 54
0b0s = LetterGothic
1b0s = LetterGothic
3b0s = LetterGothic-Bold
0b1s = LetterGothic-Italic

Section [barcode]

Section [trayN]

The following PCL functions are not supported:

• user defined fonts
• user defined symbol sets
• user defined patterns
• area fill with patterns
• HP GL/2
• Raster graphics (other than area fill)

• Times-Roman
• Courier
• Helvetica
• Symbol

• 8U - HP Roman8
• 4U - HP Roman9 (Roman8 with EUR sign)
• 9U - CP1252
• 0N - ISO Latin1
• 0M (only symbol font)

Font ID	Mapped to...
0 (Line Printer)	Courier
1	Courier
2	Courier
3	Courier
4	Helvetica
5	Times-Roman
6	Courier
4101 (CG Times)	Times-Roman
4148 (Univers)	Helvetica
16602 (Arial)	Helvetica
24580 (Helvetica)	Helvetica

As the eqpcl utility does does not read the font metrics and thus can't use the character width of proportial spaced fonts some text may be positionned improperly.

This is intended to ease the creation of custom forms. Instead of converting a custom form or logo into PCL format you may specify one or more EPS files (single page PS files _may_ work) to be used as overlay when the tray is used as a media source. An EPS file is a special postscript format that can only hold a single page.

[trayN]
# eps.file = path to include file (absolute path)
# xofs = move object x position (in decipoints, from left)
# yofs = move object y position (in decipoints, from bottom)
# scale = scale factor (in percent)
# align = align to paper edge (0=tl, 1=tr, 2=bl, 3=br, 4=orig)
# multiple objects are allowed, each starting with eps.file

• The section name [trayN] identfies the tray. It consists of the word "tray" and a numeric value N that specifies the tray number in the PCL command. For example, [tray1] specifies the tray number one.

• eps.file designates the absolute path to an EPS file that is used to overlay the page. Multiple overlays are supported, each starting with eps.file. On the Windows platform a slash is used instead of a backslash.

• scale may be used to specify a percentage by which the EPS file is scaled. If not present, the original size is used. A value of 50 scales the EPS file to 50%.

• align may be used to specifiy the alignment of the EPS content, relative to the paper edges. The following values are supported:
  • 0 = top/left
  • 1 = top/right
  • 2 = bottom/left
  • 3 = bottom/right
  • 4 = Use the position as specified in the EPS bounding box (relative to the Postscript reference point, the bottom left).
  The default is 0 which positions a EPS file releative to the top/left paper edge. This has no effect if the EPS file does not specify a bounding box.

• xofs and yofs may be used to specify an offset of the placement of the EPS file content. The EPS file content is positioned to a paper edge, based on the information in the EPS bounding box. Any position specified in the bounding box is ignored. The xofs and yofs allow to move the object accordingly, relative to the original position. The value is denoted in decipoints, that is 1/720 inch (or 1/10 point, ~0.0353 mm). An offset of 1000 would indicate 1.38 inch and 35.28 mm.

To create an EPS file, save or export your image or document as EPS file. A single page Postscript file may work as well (but is not supported as there could be side effects). On Linux or HP-UX the ImageMagick conversion utility or the netpbm utilities may be used to convert a variety of image formats to an eps file. For example:

giftopnm sample.gif | pnmtoeps > sample.eps
jpegtopnm sample.jpeg | pnmtoeps > sample.eps
convert sample.png sample.eps

Please refer to http://bwipp.terryburton.co.uk/ for more information on supported barcode types ("Symbologies") and their options.

When enabled, the barcode is identified by a font id (type face) and mapped to a barcode encoding and option. The barcode height is automatically scaled according to the font height. The barcode encoding and any number of options may be specified, separated by a space. Any number of barcode definitions may be present.

To enable barcode support the following setting in the configuration is required:

[config]
barcode = 1

[barcode]
9900 = code39 includetext
9901 = qrcode

The supported options depend on the barcode type. The includetext option is typically supported and results in printing the clear text beneath the barcode. The includecheck option is supported with some barcode types and causes an extra check digit to be generated.

The barcodes and options may be tried interactively on the web site http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/generator/

PDF/A is a variant of PDF file format designated for for the archival of electronic documents. A PDF/A file is a PDF file but must follow additional requirements specified in the ISO 19005-1:2005 standard.

The config item [config] gs.pdfa.opt may be used to specify GhostScript options when creating PDF/A format.

The config item [config] ps.pdfa_def may be used to specify a prefix file when creating PDF/A output. If specified, this replaces the builtin PDF/A setup. For an example, please refer to the lib/PDFA_def.ps file in your GhostScript installation.

Barcode Writer in Pure PostScript http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/

Copyright (c) 2004-2011 Terry Burton - tez@terryburton.co.uk

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

• Patch PE82-140620 adds support for the PDF/A document format. The eqpcl version was changed to B.08.20.04