Text to PDF converter

The TXT2PDF utility is used to convert a text file into a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. It has many options to control the conversion, output appearance, and final presentation. Some of the features include:

Annotations
Outline generation
Color control
Several background options
Viewer control
Drawing primitives
BMP and JPEG support
TrueType embedding and subsetting

At this time, the following features are only available on OS/390, z/OS, and z/VM platforms:

Encryption
Compression

At this time, the following features are only available on OS/390 and z/OS platforms:

ISPF Dialog

The ISPF Dialog features of interest are:

Prompted creation of the TXT2PDF options
Foreground and Batch processing options
Easy modeling for production batch JCL
Support for FTP and E-Mail of the generated report

The original design was simply to convert OS/390 reports to PDF prior to emailing, but TXT2PDF has been generalized and adapted to other platforms including Linux, VM, and Windows. All that is required is a REXX interpreter or compiler on the target platform.

While I was the original author of the actual conversion code, it has become a joint effort between myself and Lionel Dyck. He has written MANY useful z/OS utilities and also hosts the OS/390 version of TXT2PDF.

If you plan to use TXT2PDF on OS/390 or z/OS, you should head over to Lionel's site to grab the latest version.

But, if you're looking to use it elsewhere, you may find this distribution a bit easier to since it only includes files suitable for non-OS/390 platforms.

Lionel also hosts the documentation.

Here's a few examples of what can be achieved:

Config File	Input File	Output PDF	Support files
acmeit.conf	acmeit.txt	acmeit.pdf	acmeit.jpg
bar.conf	bar.txt	bar.pdf	IDAutomationHC39M.ttf
check.conf	check.txt	check.pdf	IDAutomationSMICR.ttf McCoyDyslexia.ttf
ebcdic.conf	ebcdic.txt	ebcdic.pdf	Cyberbit.ttf ibm1047.ucm

WARNING: As of the 04.147 release, the behavior has changed for the CC parameter under z/OS. Originally, it defaulted to "NO" but this didn't allow the EXEC to determine the carriage control from the datasets record format automatically. This has now been changed so that if no CC parameter is specified, the EXEC will query the dataset for the proper value. It is important you verify that either the CC parameter is specified in existing jobs or that they will work okay with the new behavior.

Download:

txt2pdf-19.113.tar.gz
txt2pdf-19.113-changes.txt

Previous version:

txt2pdf-09.107.tar.gz
txt2pdf-09.107-changes.txt

Or for you VMers:

txt2pdf-09.107.vmarc
txt2pdfs-09.107.vmarc (source...only needed if you want to rebuild the load modules)

Change History:

Date	Change
2018-07-30	Fixed a couple of TrueType font handling bugs. See changes file for full list.
2009-04-17	Addd new parameters/arguments (TrueType support) and more cleanup. See changes file for full list.
2008-11-06	Cleanup and critter fixes. See changes file for full list.
2004-05-26	Added new parameters/arguments and fixed a few critters. See changes file for full list.
2003-10-31	Added a few things and fixed one. See changes file for full list.
2003-08-12	Added TEXT DRAW type and fixed a bug from last update. See changes file for full list.
2003-08-10	Added DRAW / IMAGE keywords, CMS PIPELINE stage, and stdio use. See changes file for full list.
2003-08-06	Added a couple new command line parameters and a few fixes. See changes file for full list.
2002-12-02	Many updates and several fixes. See changes file in archive.
2002-10-26	Added ASCII support and some minor cleanup
2002-10-08	Initial posting