Date:         Thu, 12 Feb 2004 15:25:41 -0500
Reply-To:     Edney.Shawn@EPAMAIL.EPA.GOV
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Shawn Edney <Edney.Shawn@EPAMAIL.EPA.GOV>
Subject:      Re: DDE with Adobe Acrobat and Distiller
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

David,

I had a similar situation about a year ago. I did a search on the Adobe
web site for command line tools and found several useful webpages.
Unfortunately I cannot currently locate the docs I originally found.
So let me pass along my strategy and command line.
I had SAS write out a .bat file that contained the following command
line. In this assignment I used a macro variable "gname" to place the
.ps file name into the command. I believe the /N flag causes a new
instance of Distiller to be created for each file and the /Q causes
Distiller to close automatically after the pdf file is created. I
believe I went with this strategy because I couldn't find any way to
easily make Distiller close from within SAS after the application was
finished. I want to say this kept me from having any issues with the
xwait and xsync system options.

comm='"'||"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 5.0\Distillr\acrodist"||'" /N
/Q '||'"'||"c:\wr2503gs\"||"&gname..ps"||'"';

Using a bat file here was handy because it allowed me to easily rename
the short SAS graph file names with longer more descriptive names( with
the rename command) and clean up the original .ps files (delete command)
and then delete the bat file that was being called.

HTH,

Shawn Edney

Analyst/Programmer
CSC
79 T.W. Alexander Drive
Bldg. 4201 Suite 260
Research Triangle Park, NC
27709

(919) 558-8782 ext 216
fax  558-8788
edney.shawnRemoveDONTspamMe@epa.gov





                      David Brennan
                      <brennandavid@PRA        To:       SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
                      INTL.COM>                cc:
                      Sent by: "SAS(r)         Subject:  DDE with Adobe Acrobat and Distiller
                      Discussion"
                      <SAS-L@LISTSERV.U
                      GA.EDU>


                      02/12/2004 10:23
                      AM
                      Please respond to
                      David Brennan






Hi Folks,

I have a query in relation to using DDE with Adobe products,
specifically Adobe distiller. Basically, I have a Postscript file
which I want to convert and save as a PDF document. Distiller can be
started up using the following code:

/*****************************************/
options noxsync noxwait xmin;
filename sas2dist dde "AcroDist|system";

/* Start up Adobe Distiller */
 data _null_;
   length fid rc start stop time 8.;
   fid=fopen('sas2dist','s');
   if (fid le 0) then do;
     rc=system('start AcroDist');
     start=datetime();
     stop=start+10;
     do while (fid le 0);
       fid=fopen('sas2dist','s');
       time=datetime();
       if (time ge stop) then fid=1;
     end;
   end;
   rc=fclose(fid);
 run;

/*****************************************/

After using this code I was hoping to use DDE commands like one does
when manipulating MS Word and Excel documents. I started off simply
and thought something that the following would work where I have a PRN
file located on the C drive:

/*****************************************/
data _null_;
  file sas2dist;
  put '[FileOpen("' 'c:\test.prn' '"]';
run;
/*****************************************/

I referenced the "Acrobat Viewer Interapplication Communication
Support On-Line Reference,Technical Note #5165" document on the web
which lists many "DDE messages", e.g. [FileOpen()] as shown above.

Does anybody know if you can issue these Adobe messages through SAS?
If so, I would greatly appreciate any suggestions.

Regards,

David