From: rdeininger@mindspring.com
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2001 12:37 AM
To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject: Re: Passing PCL codes to printer via VMS printer form

In article
<709CDBE6CA13D311B4DF0008C7EAD0C604443923@phsexch13.mgh.harvard.edu>,
"Forster, Michael " <MFORSTER@PARTNERS.ORG> wrote:

 
> One PCL string example of what I have to pass to the printer is (In my
example,
> *27 indicates the <ESC>, don't know what the library control uses as the
code):
>                 *27,"&l0L",*27,"&l6D",*27,"&l0E",*27,"&l125Z",*27,"&l-233U"
> 
One suggestion:

Files that contain escape sequences are a pain to work with. Editors tend
to suppress special characters in various ways (which is good) and the
TYPE on such a file is likely to do nasty things to your terminal.

I prefer to build up such files in DCL command files, and let the command
file insert the module in a library, and then delete the raw text file. 
Something like this, using your example:

$ ESC[0,8] == %X1B
$ pcl_string = esc + "&l0L" + esc + "&l6D" + esc + ""&l0E" + esc + -
 "&l125Z" + esc + "&l-233U"
$
$ open/write temp temp.txt
$ write temp pcl_string
$ close temp
$
$ library/text/replace <library file> temp.txt
$
$ delete/nolog/noconfirm temp.txt;

This kind of file is easy to edit, print, type, etc, but it creates the
module you need with embedded special characters.

-- 
Robert Deininger
rdeininger@mindspring.com