[GRLUG] Watermarking "Print" Queue

[Roger Roelofs]

Adam,

On 5/14/10 10:29 AM, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> I've had this stupid task on my to-do list since Febuary of '08;  and 
> while I take swings at it occasionally I never arrive at something that 
> works.
> 
> We have a COBOL application that spools out jobs in PCL [a crude PCL at 
> that] on an AIX host.  I have a simple "queue" on that host which instead 
> turns the print job into a PDF and mails it to the user (which is very 
> popular).
> 
> However, users want to do the same thing but have the PDF watermarked with 
> "DRAFT".  I've tried various cocktails with enscript, pdftk, etc... but 
> never found a working solution.

First I'd suggest converting to postscript as an intermediate format.
Postscript is easier to parse and manipulate than pdf.  You can convert
to pdf as the last step.

How would the users indicate they want the DRAFT watermark?  We are
doing something similar, but we are mostly using it for routing /
automated faxing.  In our system, we add a command string in white text.
 Then the system prints to the 'switchboard' printer which has a print
filter shell script attached  The back end parses the postscript file
and routes / alters the postscript as requested.


Roger
-- 
roger.roelofs at gmail.com