AshLPD is an A-Shell/Windows application that runs on a PC and accepts print requests from other computers across the network. It may be useful in the context of PDF generation for one or more of the following reasons:
| • | Your A-Shell application is running on a UNIX server and is being accessed by telnet clients other than ATE. In this case, you need AshLPD (or something like it) in order to provide an A-Shell/Windows presence on the network so that you can access the PDFX functionality. |
| • | You have a heterogeneous network in which not all of the workstations are running a form of A-Shell/Windows (such as ATE or a peer-to-peer A-Shell/Windows client) capable of accessing the PDFX driver. In this case, you might choose to install one (or more) AshLPD servers on the network for the PDF-generation benefit of those workstations. |
| • | You choose to route all (or a certain class) of your PDF output through AshLPD in order to centralize your PDF operations on one PC, or perhaps to take advantage of one of the ability of AshLPD to add more intelligence or processing power to your PDF/printing operations than might otherwise be practical with the standard methods of printing. |
Whatever the motivation, each AshLPD server would be installed on a PC as follows:
| • | Download the AshLPD setup program from our website (ashlpd-x.x.xxx.exe) and execute it to install the program. It installs both A-Shell/Windows and the application AshLPD, and configures it to launch (from the Startup folder) as a system tray application. |
Important: If you are installing "over the top" of your existing copy of A-Shell windows, be sure to change the install folder to whatever you have used before and do not use the default installation path.
| • | Contact MicroSabio for an AshLPD license, and enter it by selecting the Register option on the AshLPD menu bar. (You can also run it in demo mode, but the pop-up messages are particularly annoying since AshLPD is really meant to work as an unattended server. We can issue you an eval license if you want to test it thoroughly before purchasing a copy. Note that without such a license, all PDFs will be generated with a demo watermark.) |
| • | Consult the AshLPD documentation for general information on configuring the network interface, printers, etc. |
| • | Since AshLPD is intended to run without user intervention most of the time, it is important to configure appropriate PDFX options so that it will not present user dialogs (i.e. for saving the PDF file, launching the Acrobat reader, email client, etc.) You can do this via the "normal" method (of embedding them in every print file), but it will probably be more sensible to create a single set of default //PDFX directive that is always invoked by AshLPD, by putting them into a file that can be specified as a prefix (via the printer init PREFIX command). The sample printer definition file, PDFLPD.PQI uses this technique, referencing PREFIX=PDFLPD.PFX. You can edit the PDFLPD.PFX file by whatever means is convenient, including this one: Use File..Exit from the AshLPD window, and select the "No" option to exit to the dot prompt. Then use VUE ASHCFG:PDFLPD.PFX to edit the file. Restart the service by entering the command ASHLPD. |
