ITEM: AN1679L

FORTRAN carriage control not printing correctly

DESC:  When the customer printed certain files, extra characters
where being printed in column 1.  She called these control
characters.

Response:

Some applications use what is called by some FORTRAN carriage
control.  This means that column one contains a character that
determines when form feeds, extra line feeds and the like are
issued.  There is a program or filter called asa which actually
points at /usr/ucb/fpr that can be used for interpretting these
control characters.  One of the best ways to do this is through
a virtual printer with fpr set as a filter.  _f=f, ff=/usr/ucb/fpr.

Customer was able to get it printing with asa, but
on some invoices the page number and the data were on
separate pages.

It appears the application is putting data into column 1 in one place causing the
extra form feed.  

Explained to customer that what was happening was that since this
program is using control characters (asa formatting - or sometimes
called FORTRAN carriage control) that all characters in column
one are interpretted as control characters.  In one case the 
application has a date in column 1.  When this data has a 1 in
it like 12:24:45 then a form feed occurs.  She will fix the 
application.

NEXT: Closing



Support Line: FORTRAN carriage control not printing correctly ITEM: AN1679L

Dated: August 1995 Category: N/A

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