RPM Elite Converts HP PCL to PDF

HP PCL files have long been used for page printing. We've heard it said that half the print jobs in the world are in HP PCL format. HP, of course, is Hewlettt-Packard, the Silicon Valley legend and owner of the PCL trademark as well as many others.

One of our most frequent requests was the ability to convert PCL to PDF (from Adobe) in RPM Remote Print Manager®.

Now we can do that. More importantly, you can do that.

Let's take a look at what this transform can do for you.

Override page size. If the PCL specifies a page size, which is typical, there's no need to change it. Otherwise you can set that here. You could change an existing page size if you like, but you should experiment with the results to see if this works as you hope.

Override orientation. You can force a page to be portrait or landscape with this setting. Again, this probably works best when the PCL is not formatted for a specific page orientation.

Keywords, etc. You can set keywords and subject. You can set the author, or use the print job owner. Finally, you can set the title, or use the print job title. This is the same as the yext markup to PDF transform.

Overlay existing PDF file. You would use this if you have a PDF file you want to use as an overlay. You can select first page, every page, even or odd pages to insert this overlay.

PDF passwords and permissions. You can set the owner or user password on your PDF file. Typically the owner password is the one you enter when you want a reader later to enter a password before reading the file. If you set one or both of these passwords, you can also restrict whether the contents of the PDF file can be copied and pasted into another document, whether it can be printed, etc.

Use raster processing. We have noticed that some graphics-rich documents do not translate correctly unless you use the raster setting. However, it will create a somewhat larger result.

Suppress blank pages. Use this setting to eliminate blank pages. We wondered if this would throw off page numbering, but if a page has a number, it isn't blank.