[comp.os.vms] Printouts

IANCU%IIL@sc.intel.COM (Haifa Site Support - Igal Iancu) (04/16/88)

Hi, 
 
I have an question in which someone might help: We are running a computer
center with 2x8800's and one 8650 on VMS 4.5.  As you might expect, we are
dealing with a many users.  The problem arises when we want to distribute
printouts to users.  We used to add numbers to our print boxes in order to make
the distribution easy for the computer room operators.  In order to add the
print_box number to the printout, we used the command: 

PRINT/NOTE=number

The "number" was defined for every user in SYLOGIN.COM by a program which
read an indexed file which assigned a number to every user and defined a
local symbol for him. 

Everything works fine except for printouts from programs, specifically MAIL.
Apparently, MAIL uses its own printing routines so we get a filename MAIL.LIS
without the /NOTE command.  Since MAIL printouts are a vast majority of
the jobs, this is realy a pain in the neck.

I have searched the Print Symbiont routines.  All I have found are examples
which will replace the Flag page.  The PSM$ routines enable you to replace the
DEC supplied routines but not to MODIFY them.  Since I have no intention to
rewrite the FLAG page routines (I do not know how to generate big letters,
etc.) I am stuck. 

What I could do is define a burst page of my own.  This is a partial solution
since with the High-quality (Daisy-wheel) and laser printers, we do not use
burst pages, so as to save paper and time.

I even tried to change the PSM$ANNOUNCE symbol (on top of the page) but
apparently the Symbiont looks for the symbol in the SYSTEM table and thus
a non-privileged user cannot define this symbol as local.

Thanks in advance,  

Igal Iancu
Intel Corporation

ARPA: iancu%iil@intel.sc.com
BITNET: iancu%iil%intel.sc.com@relay.cs.net
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