🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <l9r7r0INNq42@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu>, eijkhout@cupid.cs.utk.edu (Victor Eijkhout) writes:
> In article <1992Aug28.010819.1940@umr.edu>, mcastle@mcs213d.cs.umr.edu (Michael R Castle) writes:
> |> Our local IBM mainframe has a 3820 laster printer on it that can handle 
> |> duplex printing.  The mainframe has TeX and dvi support for the 3820, but
> |> I'd rather use the TeX system on our unix system.  My problem is moving the
> |> dvi files from the ascii based unix system to the ebcdic based ibm mainframe.
> |> 
> |> I've done a little of of looking and asking around, but can't seem to find
> |> anything that looks like it would be useful for making an easy transition
> |> between the systems.
> 
> You don't say that you have tried to simply transport the dvi files and
> that you've failed. Have you tried simply binary transporting them?

It will most probably fail.

That has nothing to do with ASCII or EBCDIC. Most DVI drivers assume
that IBM mainframes (I assume that they run either MVS or VM/CMS, not
AIX/370 ;-) store the files in fixed record files. The driver's
documentation should tell on which file format they can work. If not,
one can just look at the FCB attributes of the DVI files produced by
the mainframe TeX.

If a DVI file is transferred (of course, binary) the last record is
filled up very often, since the length of a UNIX DVI file is not a
proper multiple of the record length. Usually this padding is done
with null bytes. But the DVI definition explicitely forbids null
bytes at the end -- but it allows as the usage of "DF bytes as
padding chars.

Ie, the possible solutions for Michael:
 -- Either he is able to set the padding character in his transfer
    program to "DF.
 -- Or he must write a small tool on his UNIX box which appends a
    proper number of "DF bytes.
 -- Or he must write a small tool on his mainframe which replaces all
    null-bytes at the end of the DVI file with "DF bytes (but then he
    should check if four "DF bytes are in front of all these null
    bytes, otherwise it is surely no DVI file.)

--
Joachim

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Joachim Schrod			Email: schrod@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de
Computer Science Department
Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany

	``How do we persuade new users that spreading fonts across the page
	like peanut butter across hot toast is not necessarily the route to
	typographic excellence?				-- Peter Flynn