Re: Printing from M/F COBOL

Thanks for your suggestions.

I decided to stick with the PC_PRINTER routines. I have a few o/s
problems though that I hope maybe somebody has already had to resolve
in the past.

Problem one is where I print invoices or other re****ts. At the start
we have some control characters to set the font, orientation, pitch,
etc. Something like this.

01  LANDSCAPE.
    03 FILLER                 PIC 9(2) COMP VALUE 27.
    03 FILLER                 PIC X(16) VALUE
              "&l1o8d0l66p0e66F".

Using the PC_PRINT routines I can't do this obviously, especially not
if its going to a non-PCL printer. The PC_PRINT routines don't allow
me to print control characters (rightly so). I think I can resolve
this using the PC_PRINTER_SET_FONT call so thats ok. I may just
generate one print program that interprets these settings from the
existing printed re****ts and converts the to SET_FONT calls.


Problem two is that I want to print 'boxes' using line drawing
characters. I can't seem to get this working. I have experimented
using the PC_PRINTER_OPEN call by setting the 'flags' to
'11' (Normally set to '1' which just allows selection of a printer)
which brings up a printer font window that allows me to select
different fonts. But none of these allows me to print 'lines'. I
suspect I am barking up the wrong tree doing it this way so any help
will be appreciated.

Problem three is that sometimes in mid line I want to print some
characters in bold. The way I do this at the moment is by inserting
the PCL control characters at the right point in the print line. For
examplke:

   03  FILLER          PIC X(15) VALUE "NORMAL TEXT".
   03  FILLER          PIC 99 COMP VALUE 27.
   03  FILLER          PIC X(4) VALUE "(s4B".
   03  FILLER          PIC X(15) VALUE "BOLD TEXT".
   03  FILLER          PIC 99 COMP VALUE 27.
   03  FILLER          PIC X(4) VALUE "(s0B".
   03  FILLER          PIC X(15) VALUE "NORMAL TEXT".

Long winded maybe, but its been around 15 years, running on DOS vers
3, now on XP with a ScreenIO based interface. Looks wonderful.

Any ideas on how I can resolve this one?

Many thanks