In most IT shops, the typical application output scenario looks something like this: You have boxes of preprinted form for various purposes. Your application programs have lines and lines of code dedicated to getting the data printed in exactly the right place on each of these preprinted forms. When a print job actually runs, someone has to load the correct form in the printer and respond appropriately to the message from the waiting spool file.

If these forms have been in use for a while, they're probably no longer exactly what the user wants, but it's really not worth the time and effort it would take to redesign the forms and rejigger the application programs to format and print the data on new forms. An alternate scenario is that the forms can't be changed because someone got a deal on a three-year supply, and there are still 18 months' worth of forms in storage.

A Better Way

But it doesn't have to be this way anymore. IBM's Infoprint Designer is a software tool that provides cooperative print processing between your PC and the iSeries. Using Designer, you can create on a PC electronic versions of forms as overlay objects on the iSeries, import sample spool file data, and simply drag-and-drop data items onto your electronic form to specify how the data should be printed. Once you've completed the design and layout activities, you upload the forms, page segments, form definitions, and page definitions to the iSeries. When your application produces output, even though it's formatted the same way it always has been, your printed output appears the way you designed the layout on the PC and prints on blank paper instead of the preprinted forms you thought you were stuck with forever.

Spelling Output with an "e"

If your enterprise wants to move from having applications simply produce printed output, Designer should be part of your overall strategy for moving to creating electronic output (e-output). If you're not considering such a strategy, maybe you should be. By making use of Infoprint Designer's abilities to dynamically format and print data, you can customize the forms you produce based on the print data itself and without relying on preprinted forms. The printed pages can change, but the underlying application code doesn't have to. This not only means you can make application output changes without the expense and hassle of source code changes, it makes it possible to make such changes to legacy apps even if you no longer have access to the original source code!

I'm sure you've seen countless articles, seminars, and books written on the subject of re-engineering your applications. Less mentioned but equally important is the concept of re-engineering your application output. In fact, re-engineering your output can be even more important because the invoices, certificates, and quotations you send to your customers make an impression on those who read them. Are your forms examples of archaic, unattractive output that reflect design concepts of the 80s? Is that telling your customers something good about you? How much better would it be if you offered them something more up-to-date and easier to read?

A key benefit of Infoprint Designer is that it gives you the ability to re-engineer your application output without touching a line of source code. You can design with minimal hassle forms that are exactly what your accounting department or customers want to see. And if needs change, as they always do, you can change application output to meet new requirements just as easily. For example, Figure 1 shows the Designer Data window and View/Edit Window side-by-side, which you can use to place application data where you want it instead of where your legacy application puts it. For a list of other benefits, see "The Top Benefits of Using Infoprint Designer" (below).

Infoprint Designer has too broad a set of functions to cover completely in this article. Instead, I try to focus on some of the most common tasks, some of the ones where you get the most bang for your buck.

Designer makes use of the integrated architecture of Advanced Function Printing (AFP) to merge form overlays, print controls, and images at print time. There are a variety of ways this can happen, but Designer isolates you from almost all of the complexities of the process while delivering the necessary system management, error recovery, and performance characteristics. (If some of the terminology of AFP seems confusing, check out "A Quick Primer on AFP Objects," below.) In all of the examples that follow, remember that all you require for printing is blank paper.

Enhancing Your Printed Output

Maybe right now your application prints a simple packing slip that does little more than detail what's in the box. What your customer gets is a plain packing slip. By adding an overlay, if you can drop some simple text and boxes around your current data you can get something that looks a little more impressive. You can also further enhance the output by using Designer's font selection tool to print some of the application data in bold.

Maybe you want to take this one step further and always print standard terms and conditions on the back of every document. (Although Infoprint Designer offers many overlay options, I'll just cover the simplest here.) You can do this (assuming you have a duplex printer) by using a constant back overlay. With this option, you can choose between having the back side of the document be the same as the front (i.e., overlay and data), printing different data on the back side using the same overlay, or maybe just printing some boilerplate text on the back, which would be the solution for this example. Whatever choice you make, using overlays with your application will enhance the impression your documents make on other people.

Let's pose another hypothetical but common situation. Your application prints a single page of data, but you need to send two copies: one for the customer's records and one to be returned to you along with the customer's payment. For emphasis, you want the two copies on different colors of paper, one of which is clearly labeled as a remittance copy. Infoprint Designer lets you specify two copies from the printer on different colors of paper, one labeled as a remittance copy, while your application still thinks it's printing a single copy.

Infoprint Designer helps you do this because it gives you control over source (paper drawers) and destination (output bins) for each piece of printed output with every form you set up. In most cases, you can use the different input drawer feature to print to different colors of paper, but you could just as easily print to different sizes of paper. If you have a high-end printer, you can even opt to create stapled document sets.

The secret to accomplishing such tasks is a setup wizard added in Infoprint Designer's last upgrade. You can call the wizard by simply clicking an icon whenever you're ready to start specifying your print output.

For our example of printing boilerplate disclaimers on the back of a document, you'd initially specify whether the back side uses a different overlay, a different way of formatting the print data, or both. After you've chosen the change option for the backside overlay, the wizard asks you to name this overlay using the screen in Figure 2. Choosing the Add button opens a standard Windows file dialog box that lets you select an existing overlay or choose a new one that you'll need to create. This wizard is valuable partly because it helps the user avoid having to spend too much time poking around under the covers in Designer. This wizard helps users set up almost any complex overlay project by, for example, letting you define tests on fields you specify and then taking a designated action (Figure 3) based on test results.

Improving Your Image

Graphics and images enhance any document's impact, whether it's a printed publication such as this magazine or a document that you send to your customers. Infoprint Designer includes multiple capabilities for enhancing documents with images.

As a first option, you can use images as standalone page segments, which use images that exist on the iSeries as a separate AFP object. This alternative is best in cases where the image is one that will be shared and reused by multiple final documents (e.g., a company logo). A second common choice is to bring the image in as an embedded bitmap. Under this scenario, your image is part of a particular overlay and exists only in that overlay. You might use this option for something like a signature, because you don't want the signature image floating around your iSeries as a standalone page segment.

A third option is to use the Image Editor (Figure 4), a software product bundled with Infoprint Designer. Although Image Editor isn't the most powerful imaging product available, it does provide you with the basic tools to manipulate images before using them in overlays. As required, you can change colors, delete individual pixels, save your image as an AFP image page segment, and much more.

Conditional Processing

Conditional processing is another important Infoprint Designer feature. By creating simple conditions that are based on your print data, you can dynamically change what prints and how that printed page appears. Conditional processing makes choices at print time, based on your data, so it's totally dynamic. Within Designer, you choose an area of data that serves as your "trigger" and then specify what behavior you expect. These conditions are quite simple to code, basically consisting of one or more "If A, then do B" statement types. Note that the conditional logic is looking for variable print data at predictable locations on each page. In some cases, it's possible that an application's output may not lend itself to conditional processing with Designer, or you might need to make minor modifications to the application output in order for Designer to be able to process the output.

Testing Infoprint Designer for Yourself

If you want to learn more about what Designer can do for you, then you may want to take it for a test drive. You must install Infoprint Designer onto your iSeries machine using a valid license key to enable you to upload any kind of AFP object. IBM offers a demo version at http://www.ibm.com/eserver/iseries/printing that lets you experiment but doesn't support project save, upload, and download operations. Another good source of information is the iSeries Printing Redbook VI (SG24-6250).

You can create simple projects and put them into production using Designer by spending some time with the Getting Started guide, which comes on both the demo CD and the evaluation or production CD. This book walks you through the basics of creating overlays, importing test data from the iSeries, data mapping, and other functions. Beyond that, you should expect to invest some time and money in education, which will be money well spent because more complex projects can be difficult to create.

Infoprint Designer can transform your application output. I recommend you give it a try to improve your enterprise's image on paper.

Chip Milosch is the principal partner at Griffin Computing, a consulting firm. He has extensive experience implementing Infoprint Designer and training users. He's also one of the primary beta testers for new releases of the product. You can reach him at cmilosch@ameritech.net or by phone at (847) 309-6220.