[LINUX5250] Re: SCS data conversion??

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, TitanRebel wrote:

> I found this list via Google while searching for an answer to a problem.
> I'm looking forward to reading the posts since I have been a Linux
> convert for the last 1.5 years.

Welcome!

> You guys seem to be the only ones that have figured out the same problem
> we are having. Our solution can not have a Linux or Windows solution,
> but rather we need either a Java or RPG solution. So I just hope you
> guys can get me started.

Can you share why you can't use linux (or other *nix)?

> I've noticed that the tn5250 has something called scs2ascii, scs2pdf,
> etc.  So someone has figured out how to translate raw SCS data into
> other formats.  How could we get started doing this?  IBM support has
> not been helpful at all. In Java, I've tried reading it in and then
> writing it to an OUTQ using the SpooledFileOutputStream class, but all I
> get is garbage. My buddy has tried several API's via RPG with no success.

Well you could always look at the source code.  But remember that scs2*
and everything else in the tn5250 project is licensed under the LGPL, so
if you use any of the code in your project then your project must conform
to the terms of the LGPL.

The files to look at are scs.c and scs2ascii.c.  scs2pdf.c and scs2ps.c
include a bunch of stuff specific to PDFs and postscript that would
probably just get in the way of really grokking what is going on.  Also be
aware that we have to convert from ebcdic to ascii encoding (and this may
be where your current efforts are failing).

> Is there a Java or RPG port of scs2*?  If not, how would someone get
> started writing this conversion from scratch in Java or RPG?  How big of
> a project would this be?  Is there a better way to do this?

No, there isn't a java or rpg port.  but try compiling scs2* on the
as/400.  The C code should be fairly generic and portable.

James Rich