How to enable frontend printing using Adobe Print Forms

Question

Otto Gold at the forum "SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe" gave me the tip that Sandra Rossi in this forum might help me out. Here is the link to my original thread How to enable frontend printing using Adobe Print Forms
My question was:
Hi Experts!
Did anyone of you manage to enable frontend printing using Adobe Print Forms? In order to save administration effort we use frontend printing in our ERP system. We just changed some SMARTFORMS to the new Adobe Forms technology. Now we learned that direct frontend printing does not work with these forms.
Any help will be very much appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Gerald

Answer 1

I think you'll be disappointed by a rather negative answer but I'll try to explain everything I know (or think I know) the best I can
The simplest solution is to do a preview, and print from Adobe Reader! (as I could see on one project, users have to display one more dialog than usually to print) It's the best workaround according to me.
How Adobe form printing works:
When you print an Adobe form from SAP, a printer language (PCL, PS, ZPL, PDF) is retrieved from TSP0B table according to the device type, ADS (Adobe Document Services, installed in the SAP java stack) is then contacted to generate the form: a file corresponding to the printer language is generated and sent back to SAP (there are also 2 other little files but it's of none interest here). SAP stores it as a file (named SPOOL...) in the global directory (DIR_GLOBAL when you use AL11 transaction).
When you ask SAP to print it, it sends the file as is to the printer.
Note: when you ask SAP to display the spool, SAP sends a request to ADS which will send back a PDF (binary stream which is not stored on disk, just displayed on frontend).
How frontend printing works:
If you want to print a normal spool via frontend, SAP doesn't know the language of the printer you will choose. SAP sends the spool in a format named SAPWIN to a frontend program named SAPLPD, it converts the SAPWIN format into GDI, a Windows format that is understood by all printer drivers, and it is sent to the printer driver (you have selected) which converts the GDI format into the printer language.
Any workaround?
First possibility would be that ADS converts the PDF into SAPWIN format (by creating an Adobe .XDC file at the ADS side). SAP says it's not possible in Note 685571 - Printing PDF-based forms. As I understand, SAPWIN is a very simple language compared to PCL for example, so it is very difficult to convert a PDF to SAPWIN without losing much information. There's a SAP note about the SAPWIN language if you want to check.
Second possibility is to print directly the PDF through Adobe Reader: you get the PDF from ADS, download it to the frontend (easy), and execute directly Adobe Reader print function. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's possible. Moreover, we should enhance the standard SAP print dialog...
Third possibility is the one I recommended at the beginning of this post