The March 1990 issue of Midrange Computing had an article on "Easier Workstation File Coding." We use the technique to line up columns of output with variable fonts on the IBM 3812 pageprinter. We had to put an ending position for one character at the beginning position, and then leave off the ending position for the rest of the text. Using an ending position on a string with a variable font causes the left side to not line up. The example shown in 1 illustrates this technique.

The March 1990 issue of Midrange Computing had an article on "Easier Workstation File Coding." We use the technique to line up columns of output with variable fonts on the IBM 3812 pageprinter. We had to put an ending position for one character at the beginning position, and then leave off the ending position for the rest of the text. Using an ending position on a string with a variable font causes the left side to not line up. The example shown in Figure 1 illustrates this technique.

The catch to this is that each line without an ending position generates a warning message during compilation. The RPG compiler halts a compile when too many error messages are generated, and issues a message about a message file being full. In our case, it was about four hundred errors, and IBM support could not tell us how to expand the error file size. On this one, we broke our output into two separate programs.

Not using ending positions is a great time saver, and is sometimes essential, but as usual, IBM stuck us with some limitations.

Russell Mierta West Hartford, Connecticut

TechTalk: Lining Up Proportional Spacing

Figure 1 Output specs for IBM 3812 PagePrinter

 Figure 1: Output Specs for IBM 3812 PagePrinter Correct: .... ....1.... ....2.... ....3.... ....4.... ....5.... ....6.... ....7 OFILE E 1 PRINT1 O 15 'M' O 'ID-RANGE' O E 1 PRINT1 O 15 'C' O 'OMPUTING' Incorrect: OFILE E 1 PRINT1 O 23 'MID-RANGE' O E 1 PRINT1 O 23 'COMPUTING'