Do I have to pay for using FPDF4ZOS ?
NO. This tool is available for free, whatever the machine considered for production. However, MVS installation and minimum training to get developers started may potentially require a further two or three days training sessions which obviously are not part of this package.
Can I run FPDF4ZOS in Windows or Linux-Unix environments ?
YES, absolutely; and there is more to it. In case of downsizing from MVS to Linux-Unix or Windows, all investments done in FPDF4ZOS will definitely NOT be lost as everything will run the same, with only marginal adjustments to take into account hosting environment changes. For example, PDS or PDSE containing members would have to be mapped to directories containing files.
When I include a form or an image, the tool declares that it cannot locate those resources.
This is probably because the form.dir and / or logo.dir.parameters in the initial configuration file is not properly set. Besides, for Windows and Unix environments, extensions .frm and .jpg are automatically appended to the form or image IDs to access to the related file in that directory. Finally, Linux users are reminded that file names are case sensitive which may lead to countless headaches …
I have created a PDF file but Adobe Reader cannot open it.
There may be several reasons for this:
- PDF doesn’t contain any page, meaning no AddPage() call was ever issued during processing.
- File transfer from MVS to a machine equipped with Adobe Reader was not done in binary mode.
PDF displays black rectangles seemingly without any text in them ; or text doesn’t appear although Cell(), Write() or Text() functions were issued.
Upon intializing a PDF context, all colors are set to 0 meaning Fill, Draw and Text colors all default to black. If a filled cell should contain a piece of text while Fill color has not been changed, the cell will contain black letters on a black background. A variant of this issue, perhaps slightly more difficult to pinpoint, will occur if for some reasons, Text and Fill color have both been set to white. In that case, nothing will be visible although target text will appear inside a stream content in the PDF file.
Monthly Log files are not created .
This may be caused by a wrong specification of line JRNL.DIR within initialization file. Or for Windows-Linux platforms, or by the fact that the specified directory does not exist.