Hi everyone. I'm running a test server that has Windows Server 2012 R2 on it. I'm successfully offering up Tessitura via RemoteApp. However, one issue I've run into is that I can't create the normal Sybase Datawindow PS PDF printer so that our folks can save reports and such things as PDF files. I have installed the Ghostscript PDF printer driver but when I select that as the driver, then go to name the printer Sybase Datawindow PS and click Next nothing happens. It won't progress to the next step.
Is anyone else out there running Tessitura on Windows Server 2012 R2 and have successfully created that printer on the server so that your folks can save to PDF?
If you don't want to disable driver signature enforcement, you can actually spoof Tessi into thinking any regular PostScript printer is the Sybase DataWindow PS printer -- it doesn't actually have to be the GhostPDF.inf "driver".
What's actually happening here is that Tessitura uses the system printer to generate a postscript file, which is then fed to GhostScript outside of the print process to generate the PDF file you want. The Ghostpdf.inf file is just a plaintext file that contains some parameters for the PS file generation process that aligns with what GhostScript wants as input -- but GhostScript itself isn't THAT picky and any generic PS printer driver should work in exactly the same way (TN recommends using the "HP Color LaserJet 2800 Series PS" driver).
If you review the documentation file Tessitura Report Server Setup and Administration, this process actually appears under the heading "Install a Kernel-Mode Print Driver on Windows 2008 for PDF Formats" (though the section title is a bit of a misnomer since you're not installing a kernel-mode driver at all).
Thanks for the ideas guys. I couldn't find the HP Color LaserJet 2800 Series PS driver on the Server 2012 R2 box so I tried some others (the 2700 series and the 2820 series) but neither works. The PDF is created but it's blank for the most part and Adobe throws up a message about there being a problem with the file. I'm going to try another driver, perhaps something like the free Bullzip PDF printer driver which I've used on PC's but never on servers, and see what happens. If that doesn't work I might try the unsigned driver option just to see what happens.
Are you sure the other printers you tried were PostScript drivers? If the driver name ended in PCL or something, it won't work -- but anything that ends in PS should.
If you continue to have trouble, you might try breaking down the process to figure out where the point of failure is -- print to the FILE: printer with the driver you are testing with the normal print dialog (instead of Tessi's Save As) first, and then send the resulting file to GhostScript -- you can use the ps2pdf.bat script in \gs9.10\lib\ to do this, but you will probably need to run set GSC=C:\path\to\bin\gswin32c.exe first. (I just tested this with the HP LaserJet 2300 Series PS driver without issue.)
Yes I'm sure. However, I tried the HP Universal PostScript Print Driver and that worked!