I've looked at the Downloads/Documentation page but don't see anything that appears to relate to PDF. Is there not a documentation file for the PDF addon?

Related, does ASHELL-PDF require a special piece of software running on a WINDOWS machine, separately from Adobe Acrobat?

It's "PDFX", at the bottom of the table of available documents.

Just back from lunch, got very excited about there being a question on the forum that I could actually answer.

Oh. Damn. Jack got to it first.

Answering the rest of the question, John:

To CREATE the PDF from A-Shell, you need to license/install a module from us that actually creates the PDF. You DO need to install some software (that we provide) on a PC. You do NOT need Acrobat on that PC, though it's helpful to have it.

To READ the resulting PDF, one uses the free version of Acrobat, and so no, no software from us or any other source (besides Acrobat) is required.

As an alternative, for very simple text-to-pdf conversions on the Linux side, you can use the A2PDF.SBX routine in [907,43] of the SOSLIB.

Some of the advantages of PDFX are that you can access the full range of A-Shell/Windows GDI printing capabilities, and control aspects of the PDF creation (file name, location, meta-data, etc.) and post-processing (viewing, emailing), that would otherwise have to be left to the user to perform manually.

The PDFX entry at the bottom of the list is pretty obvious, once I opened my eyes. I also found a 2007 version in PDF format on my system. Is the latest version available in PDF, or is the the 2007 version substantially up-to-date?

I knew about the added ASHELL license, but didn't realize you provided the only software needed on the PC.

For info, the intended application is to send reservation confirmations to Recombo for digital signature processing.

If you prefer working with PDF docs, John, I can generate one for you. The on-line (HTML) and CHM versions seem to be the most popular formats, so I've eased off on the PDFs. But it's not a big deal to make one if that's what you prefer.

There ARE substantial changes since the 2007 doc was written, but they have mostly to do with email. If you're not planning to automatically email the generated PDFs, then your older version of the doc should be fine. If you want to email, then DO get the latest docs.

I can read the html version OK online, but when I click on the CHM version, it downloads pdfx.chm, but when I click on the downloaded file it tells me "Navigation to the webpage was canceled."

I would like the PDF version if it's not too much trouble.

Thanks.

John (and everybody), CHM files are considered "active," like programs, and Windows treats them as potentially hostile/harmful files. After downloading, you must right-click on the CHM file icon, select "Properties," and then "unblock" the file. This blocking thing does not always happen, but usually it does.

Independently of all that, I'll generate a PDF and post it soon.

Okay John, there's now a PDF version of the doc available from the A-Shell documents download page. It seems that I underestimated the amount of time and work it would take to make a *good* PDF, so I made a *quick* one instead. Well, relatively quick. It's a bit crude, but all the info fits on the pages and there are no glaring problems. Please let me know if this quick-and-dirty solution is not good enough.

I will mention in passing that that the majority of A-Shell doc readers prefer the on-line or CHM versions to PDF, and--in my opinion anyway--there are many good reasons for that preference.

Ty, thanks for the PDF file. I notice the links are not active, but it will suit my needs. No need for more work on it.

Thanks for the tip on the CHM files, I guess I don't do enough of this work any more. These little "unblock" type of details seem to be escaping me more and more often. All seems to be well now.

John, it just took me a minute to fix the links; had skipped a step. New version posted, links working. Thanks for the feedback.