| Ocxtober
2000
eFORMz
brings Java’s potential to 3000 forms
Application
leverages language to make design and data delivery simple
Review by Shawn Gordon
Years ago there was a pretty large selection of packages
for forms processing on the HP 3000. As I recall, three of
them disappeared into Unison, and some others just went away.
I know that forms processing has been an issue at my last
several jobs and with clients, so I’m not sure what the
problem is. I do know that Minisoft has seen this opportunity
and created a whole new generation of forms design and
processing software with eFORMz.
Why is this a new generation? Minisoft is learning from the
many products that they have developed, and when they did
their Java-based termulator Javelin they discovered the
promised land of Java. Basically all the parts of eFORMz, the
client form designer, as well as the server form processor,
are written in Java. This means that out of the box, eFORMz
will run on pretty much any platform that supports Java.
You will optionally need a spool program — such as
Minisoft’s NP92 — to send the PCL to an appropriate
printer from your HP 3000.
How does it work?
To start off, select a form that you want to produce. With
this information in hand, you construct your form in eFORMz
form designer (optionally, you can pay Minisoft to build a
form for you). You can also scan in a form if you just want to
do some basic tests. In any case, once your form is built, you
can either have your HP 3000 program produce the output so
that it overlays the way you want, or configure rules for
placement (more on that later). Once the whole thing is done,
then using the integrated FTP capability you send it up to the
3000.
Now that you have your form on the HP 3000, you need to set
up your spooling environment so that you can capture your
report and merge it with the form. I used NP92, and it works
very well. I can’t comment on any other spoolers.
Now it’s just a matter of generating a spool file that
matches the criteria so it can be merged with the form, and
the PCL sent to the printer. While Java isn’t the fastest
thing on the planet, at least on the merging end you don’t
really notice it because it’s a batch process.
Features
Now for some details on dealing with forms. The eFORMz
designer, Composer, allows you to create print Projects. A
project is the entire print process for a particular data
source. Each Project can contain a number of Pages, with each
page containing a number of Forms.
Forms are split into two categories: Base form and Overlay.
If a form is not specified as a Base form, it is an Overlay.
Base Forms allow you to print the same data in a number of
different formats. Overlays simply overlap the Base form to
alter the appearance.
Each form can contain a number of rules. Rules are used to
alter the appearance of data that is displayed on the form.
Rules provide you with the options of changing font size and
style, moving data on your form, and converting ASCII
characters to barcode characters (which all by itself is very
cool).
There are also “if” conditions you can apply to rules.
This feature lets you say something like “If the data starts
with a -, then make it bold.” This is a very powerful
feature, and one that will surely make forms processing much
easier for many people.
Ingeneral your projects will only have one logical page,
even though the actual print job may contain several physical
pages. For example, if you are creating a payroll print job
for your company that consists of five employees, and the
payroll print job simply prints one check after another, this
would be considered a Single Page project.
Something that isn’t all that obvious in eFORMz is that
you can import a form from a scanned image. If you are going
to go this route, then make sure you clean up the scan of your
existing form as much as possible before you use it —
otherwise you will always have poor-looking forms.
One of the really nifty features is the barcode conversion
of text and numbers. eFORMz has support for a whole slew of
different bar code types, like 39, extended 39, Codabar,
Interleave 2 of 5, MSI Code, Code 11, UPC A and E, EAN 8 and
13, Jan Code, Code 93 and 128. For anyone that has had to deal
with bar codes, this is really a godsend.
Installation and Documentation
Installation is very straightforward for the PC module of
the software. Minisoft includes a tape for your HP 3000 with
the latest Java environment, and has done a very credible job
of making the install as clean and simple as possible. The
documentation is purely electronic in PDF format, which is
fine, but there is absolutely not one shred of information in
the box on how to install or where to start. I would seriously
suggest that Minisoft at least print out the installation
instructions so that you know where to start.
Other than that, the documentation is well written as a
reference guide, and there is one sample project to play with.
Since the technology is so new and the paradigm so different
than what people are used to, I would probably include a
tutorial that really walked a user through the process for the
first time. The manual covers all the topics; it’s just that
a walk-through would speed up the learning curve.
The TestDrive
Mostly I played around with the sample files that were
supplied to test eFORMz, and overall I really liked the
product. But I’m struck by just how incredibly slow Java
still appeared on my desktop system. I ran the form designer
under Win98 on a 466Mhz CPU with 64 Mb of RAM. While I’ll
admit this isn’t a total killer machine, it’s way more
than the standard machines at the last couple of clients where
I worked. The speed of Java is no fault of Minisoft’s, of
course, but it’s something to consider. If you are going to
appoint a forms designer, get that person a beefy desktop
machine.
I toyed around with creating forms, and that was pretty
straightforward. But I found that it sure can be tedious. I
would probably just pay Minisoft to create forms, if you’ve
only got a few forms to create. The step of aligning data and
the form is also rather tedious, but once it’s done, it’s
done.
I really didn’t have any problems with the software other
than how incredibly slow Java was on my system. The
performance on my desktop kept me from doing any major form
development, so I mostly worked off the sample. I did receive
an updated .jar file for the desktop client during the review
— Minisoft had gone through some optimization and made the
client a bit snappier, so that helped.
Conclusions
The shining star of eFORMz is also its biggest weakness at
the moment, and that is Java. I found Java to be just so darn
slow on my desktop system. I applaud Minisoft for creating an
entire package like this in Java: it’s quite amazing. I know
Java performance gets better all the time, and machines get
faster all the time, so it really shouldn’t be an issue.
That said, the product is very well done and has a pretty
thorough feature set to cover everything you would want to do,
especially in a first release. The documentation is also clear
and well-written, and the learning curve is short.
eFORMz also has the benefit of having been produced from
scratch based on everything everyone has learned over the last
15 years of this kind of software on the HP 3000. This means
there isn’t a bunch of “stuff” in there for backward
compatibility, and everyone knows why features are there and
how they work. This is very important these days, when
software at many companies has changed hands so many times and
gone through so many developers that people are afraid to do
anything to it, or don’t know why certain things are there.
Need to do form processing? Look at eFORMz.
Shawn Gordon, whose S.M. Gordon & Associates firm
supplies HP 3000 utilities, has worked with 3000s since 1983.
Copyright
The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.
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