Using older programs

[J. Ray1674]

Hi. I am an old gent who bought software in the 80s. I have been the voluntary Librarian for my county archaeological society for many years. I have the book catalogue (2500+ items) on early Paradox . This only prints to LPT1 direct to the printer (an old HPG55 in this case) OR into a file. I have written a program which resolves the coding in the database and produced the print commands. Previously I have printed out 60+ A4 pages, scanned to .jpg and converted to .pdf. A big job.

QUESTION. Do you have, in your back catalogue perhaps, or know of, a program that will read the file, the HP language convert the escape codes etc and prepare the text into any modern format eg. Microsoft or OpenOffice document or better still a .pdf directly? OR into any intermediate step along the way. (eg. dBase).

That would be a great help to me, please help of you can.. Thanks. Ray Marjoram. [Moderator deleted private information. Please do not post private information like e-mails and phone numbers]

[Test Screen Name]

You've posted in the forum for Adobe Stock. This is a service where Adobe licenses photography to designers.

I am pretty sure there is no correct forum, though, as Adobe never made any app to read PCL or other printer languages other than PostScript.

[Abambo]

I moved this to the lounge as this is the place to discuss anything that does not fit in other fora. Maybe a user in this forum knows an answer.

[Nancy OShea]

I don't know if this will help you.  This software claims to convert Paradox data to XLS, CSV, SQL, XML, Txt, HTML, etc...

https://www.dbf2002.com/paradox-converter/

Disclaimer: I've never used it.

Hope that helps.

[J. Ray1674]

Hi Nancy,

Thanks very much for your message. I have downloaded the program that
you have suggested. It is very useful to know of and have it.

But that is not quite my problem. I want to convert a Paradox free
Report format for a HP printer to a text document of the type mentioned.
It a matter of resolving the various escape codes which determine the
output into a text document or a pdf format. I am reluctant to reprogram
all the print statements into, for example PostScript. It is many years
ago since I did any work with PostScript and not much then. Years roll on!.
But thanks again.
--
Regards

Ray Marjoram

[Abambo]

Looks like adinosaur as it supports even OpenVMS and it is probably not in an acceptable price range... http://www.visual.co.uk/pcl2pdf.html

[rayek.elfin]

No need to pay for a Paradox DB file viewer:

http://www.sportamok.com/development/delphi/8-paradox-dbase-reader

It reads Paradox files, and outputs these as Excel for import into either LibreOffice (the improved off-shoot of OpenOffice) or MS Office.

[J. Ray1674]

Hi Sportamok

Thank you or your reply to my request on Adobe. It is nice to know of
this reader.

However my problem is a bit different. I have Paradox 3.5 and, in
particular a large library book catalogue with various internal codes.
I have written a program in Paradox which formats and writes the sorted
catalogue into over 60 A4 two-column pages resolving the escape codes on
the way but only via LPT1 to the printer or file. I would like to read
this file and get it to produce a document at best a pdf. If you know of
such or can make a suggestion then please do.

Many thanks.
--
Regards

Ray Marjoram
[Moderator deleted private information. Please do not post private information like e-mails and phone numbers]

[rayek.elfin]

Paradox 3.5 - that means you are still running this in DOS?

Perhaps this might be a work-around:

https://github.com/Wengier/dosbox-x-wiki/wiki/Guide%3ASetting-up-printing-in-DOSBox%E2%80%90X

https://dosbox-x.com/

Run Paradox in DosBox-X, and print to a PostScript file, which is easily converted to a PDF.