RE: ostensibly identical spool files (Long)

>Eric said
>Does you original PRTF specify font or page margins that may be different in
>the copied SPLF. Have you compared the spool file attributes to see if there
>are differences?  Use WRKSPLFA OUTPUT(*PRINT) on both splfs and compare the
>reports.



     the external printer file was created with virtually no changes
to the defaults - only page size/length/overflow

I then performed the override (lpi/cpi overlay) and generated the spool file.

A WRKSPLFA of both produces the following (only differences shown)
The first column is the original spool, the second the copied one
using CTLCHAR(*FCFC) to QSYSPRT.

 Device file  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :   MSP635F             QSYSPRT
   Library  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :     MIKEUTL                QSYS

 User-specified data  . . . . . . . . . . :   MSP835              (blank)
 Program that opened file . . . . . . . . :   MSP835               (blank)
   Library  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :     MIKEUTL                (blank)
 Date file was opened . . . . . . . . . . :   02/11/01            different
 Time file was opened . . . . . . . . . . :   15:29:41            ditto
 Date file was last used  . . . . . . . . :   02/11/01            ditto
Record length  . . . . . . . . . . . . . :   *RCDFMT              125
Control character  . . . . . . . . . . . :   *NONE            *FCFC

Doing a DSPFD of the 2 printer files does reveal more differences but
I have now taken these into account.

>Paul said
>The *AFPDS to PCL conversion of the OS/400 Host Print Transform function
>works best when the spool file to be printed has been created by an
>application as opposed to copied from an already existing spool file.

I have no problem with this however....

I copied the normal spool to a physical file using FCFC.
I then wrote a short program to generate a copy of the spool using
the control chars in the physical file and then wrote the data to an
externally defined printer file within this program - with all the previous
over-rides in-situ.

The result was the same as if I had copied the physical file to QSYSPRT
however I have used ostensibly an application to generate the spool.

>If you changed your application logic to create two spool files (one
>production - one copy), using different printer files to choose the
>destination output queue and overlay to be applied, you would probably
>resolve your problem.

As mentioned b4, I would like to keep an original version for archive
purposes (and preferably a SCS type spool).


The only thing that I can think of  is that the CPYSPLF *FCFC is putting
in some invisible characters which subsequently alters any spool file
generated from the file.

Very strange !

 Mike



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