Re:Usefulness of O-specs (Re: RPG Cycle)

<snip>
We use o-specs all the time to produce the ZPL output for our Zebra
label printers, just override QPRINT with the RMTOUTQ for the printer
and then...

...
FQPRINT O F 132 PRINTER USROPN
DLBLQTY S 3 0 INZ(001)
... Some code ...
C EVAL LBLQTY = 100
C OPEN QPRINT
C EXCEPT LBLQ
C CLOSE QPRINT
... More and more code ...
OQPRINT E LBLQ
O '~CC?'
O '?XA'
OQPRINT E LBLQ
O '?LH10,10'
O '?PQ'
O LBLQTY
O '?BY3,3,100'
... Some actual label formatting in here ...
OQPRINT E LBLQ
O '?XZ'
</snip>

This is what I hate about RPG programming in the monolith.

I worked for a Shipping software company and it was this kind of stuff
that they were doing. Thousands of lines of hardwired code to write
labels.

I created a service program, stored the ZPL code in IFS text files and
put tags in the text files. The service program opened the file, read it
in, inserted the data and wrote out as ASCII so there was no conversion
from EBCDIC.

You just called functions to load tags and then one function call to
print the label.

If you needed to change the ZPL, you just edited the ZPL with a text
editor.

What still irritates me is that when I left the company, the programmer
throw away the program and went back to RPG III and hardwired labels
because he didn't want to do anything except RPG III.

Using the power of ILE.