[comp.lang.postscript] Postscript translator for IBM MVS mainframe?

das@voodoo.boeing.com (Deb Schwartz) (04/02/91)

Just in case this is a wheel that's already been invented....

We are looking for a program that will run under MVS on an IBM mainframe,
translate straight EBCDIC text into Postscript, and write it to a file in ASCII.
Anyone know if such a beast already exists?

Thanks,

Debbie Schwartz                              (206) 865-6558 (wk)
Boeing Computer Services  das@voodoo.boeing.com  or  uunet!bsctec!voodoo!das
M/S 7K-20,     P.O. Box 24346,      Seattle, WA    98124-0346
*** Boeing only owns the programming part of my brain: the rest is all mine. ***

philip@hubcap.clemson.edu (Philip L Harshman) (04/03/91)

das@voodoo.boeing.com (Deb Schwartz) writes:
>We are looking for a program that will run under MVS on an IBM mainframe,
>translate straight EBCDIC text into Postscript, and write it to a file in ASCII.

I'm sure this is more complicated (and expensive) than you want, but DCF (IBM's
version of SCRIPT) can output a PostScript file in either ASCII or EBCDIC.
You could therefore feed it your EBCDIC text (giving it appropriate formatting
commands) and get ASCII PostScript out.  Certainly a workable solution if you
already have DCF, but I certainly wouldn't want to install and pay for it
just for this application.

-- 
Philip Harshman                         uucp: ... !gatech!hubcap!philip
Employed by Clemson University         	inet: philip@hubcap.clemson.edu
although they have no idea that       bitnet: philip@clemson
I'm doing this. (So don't tell!)       phone: (803) 656-3697

marc@sequoia.cray.com (Marc Bouron) (04/03/91)

In article <1198@voodoo.UUCP>, das@voodoo.boeing.com (Deb Schwartz) writes:
|> Just in case this is a wheel that's already been invented....
|> 
|> We are looking for a program that will run under MVS on an IBM mainframe,
|> translate straight EBCDIC text into Postscript, and write it to a file in ASCII.
|> Anyone know if such a beast already exists?


If you have Script/VS and ISPF on MVS, you could construct a file-tailoring job
which wraps an `asis' environment around your text.  Script/VS can then process
this and produce PostScript.  Note, however, that Script's version of PostScript
is rather peculiar: all the text remains in EBCDIC: they simply re-encode the
vector which maps `bytes' to `characters'.  This means you have ASCII-readable
PostScript interspersed with unreadable eight-bit garbage.  This might be fine
as it stands, but you get into trouble of you want to use very-ASCII utilities:
for example, I find that mail(1) on UNIX eats seven-bit data, and only deals
with `records' of 255 bytes (IBM PS output is 260 bytes `wide' :-o ).  Still, it
is possible to use...

Of course, there might be someone out there wanting to port Transcript to MVS!!!
:-)  But I doubt it, somehow...


[M][a][r][c]


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