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[fengling]

hi pals,
Recently, I am working on reports, which is printed by PLI with commercial logic. All the reports contains ASA carriage at the first column every line(LRECL=133).I have got some info about ASA carriage control:
Mainframe printing in the days of line printers used some very simple control characters to control the movement of the paper through the printer:
Character Meaning
blank Advance paper one line
0 Advance paper two lines
- Advance paper three lines
+ Do not advance; overstrike previous line
Example with ASA carriage control characters:

1This is the first line on the page
0This is the third line on the page
-This is the 6th line on the page
This is the 7th line on the page
+ - Overstrike the 7th line
Example as printed:

This is the first line on the page

This is the third line on the page


This is the 6th line on the page
This is the 7th line on the page - Overstrike the 7th line

I wonder the ability of printing a blank line is controlled by ASA carriage control characters. My question is if my report contains a blank line,whether this blank line is contained in the printed report.
My example is here:
1This is the first line on the page

This is the third line on the page
printed as
This is the first line on the page

This is the third line on the page
Really? thanks my pals.

[CICS Guy]

[fengling]

thanks a lot.
Besides the question above, I am paying more attention to the report printed by real printer, not stored in dataset. Because I've not seen a report producted by Mainframe with 132 char(ASA control character is removed) in paper. I am doing some test about all the system control reports.I don't known how to print this 133 char report, My workplace has network IBM printer and My OS is Windows. If done, I think I'll get rid of puzzledom. but when I download the report as .txt ,the report is printed as in dataset with carriage control characters. Who can tell me how I can get the finial report. All the reports will be sent to RMDS. but in test environment, the RMDS is not work, and I've nerver got any experiences about RMDS.
if any one has experience, please give me a suggestion. All the report will be read by BA, I must do it seriously.
thanks a lot for sharing.

[JanM]

fengling,
A blank line of 133 characters consists of two parts, a one-byte ASA control character followed by 132 bytes of data, which all happen to be blank.
Since the control character is a blank, the line of data will be printed on the next line.

[Bill Dennis]

While most network printers will handle the '+' overprint control character, I've seen problems with it when collecting reports into a repository product. The two lines may show separate rather than merged onto one.

Because very few printers actually overprint lines anymore (usually as a means to create BOLD print), it would be best to stop using the '+' print control char.
_________________
Regards,
Bill Dennis

Disclaimer: My comments on this foorum are my own and do not represent the opinions or suggestions of any other person or business entity.

[shekar123]

Fengling,

Some more info: