Does Spool support HP GL/2 ?

Products

• Spool

Issue/Introduction

HP-GL/2 is a part of the PCL emulation, which includes graphics commands.

HP-GL/2 graphics mode can be used to produce vector graphics output using the commands of the HP-GL/2 graphics language.

HP-GL/2 mode must be active to cause the printer to begin interpreting the incoming data stream as HP-GL/2 commands instead of PCL commands.

 

Environment

Release: Output Management Spool for z/OS

Resolution

Spool expects each line of a PCLLIB member to start with the PCL escape character (EBCDIC x'27' or ASCII x'1B) depending on the driver and options in use.

TCPDRIV option lowercase "g" must be used when statements that do not start with an escape character are to be inserted as part of the PCLLIB statements.

When option "g" is active, statements that start with an asterisk are considered to be a comment and will be ignored.

Statements will be inserted until a space (blank) is found; the rest of the data with this statement will be ignored.

Note that HP GL/2 commands LB (label) that include spaces will not give the expected result; with the following example - LBTHIS IS A LABEL - , only the word THIS will print.

To resolve this problem there are two possible options:

1. Define each word with its own HP GL/2 LB statement which will require to have each word positioned at the right place using PA commands
2. Convert the PCLLIB member to a BINLIB member, and setup TCPDRIV with option B

 

Additional Information

Refer to the Spool 14.0 Documentation for a description of the Spool TCPDRIV NODE options.

Refer to the HP PCL 5 Printer Language Technical Quick Reference Guide for the documentation about PCL and HP GL/2 languages.