Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!timbuk!marc
From: marc@sequoia.cray.com (Marc Bouron)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Postscript translator for IBM MVS mainframe?
Keywords: No snide remarks, please!
Message-ID: <103424.20764@timbuk.cray.com>
Date: 2 Apr 91 20:38:57 GMT
References: <1198@voodoo.UUCP>
Reply-To: marc@sequoia.cray.com (Marc Bouron)
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Lines: 34


In article <1198@voodoo.UUCP>, das@voodoo.boeing.com (Deb Schwartz) writes:
|> Just in case this is a wheel that's already been invented....
|> 
|> We are looking for a program that will run under MVS on an IBM mainframe,
|> translate straight EBCDIC text into Postscript, and write it to a file in ASCII.
|> Anyone know if such a beast already exists?


If you have Script/VS and ISPF on MVS, you could construct a file-tailoring job
which wraps an `asis' environment around your text.  Script/VS can then process
this and produce PostScript.  Note, however, that Script's version of PostScript
is rather peculiar: all the text remains in EBCDIC: they simply re-encode the
vector which maps `bytes' to `characters'.  This means you have ASCII-readable
PostScript interspersed with unreadable eight-bit garbage.  This might be fine
as it stands, but you get into trouble of you want to use very-ASCII utilities:
for example, I find that mail(1) on UNIX eats seven-bit data, and only deals
with `records' of 255 bytes (IBM PS output is 260 bytes `wide' :-o ).  Still, it
is possible to use...

Of course, there might be someone out there wanting to port Transcript to MVS!!!
:-)  But I doubt it, somehow...


[M][a][r][c]


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