How to prevent Dispatch from inserting page breaks into its output

Products

• Dispatch Output Mgmt

Issue/Introduction

As a sample problem scenario, you're sending a report dataset into Dispatch that does not contain any skip to channel 1 or any other "page break" carriage control characters. The file you are sending contains thousands of lines. You have the LINES PER PAGE parameter on the reports VRDMU110 base definition screen defined as zero with the hopes of preventing Dispatch from inserting any page break characters. You've confirmed that the Dispatch STC contains a "//LINEOFF  OUTPUT LINECT=0,DEFAULT=YES" DD statement and, you've tried setting the VRDMU110 screens "Convert CC to Mach" parameter as both 'Y' and 'N' and yet, every time this report is processed through Dispatch, Dispatch is inserting a page break after every 255 lines. How can you prevent Dispatch from inserting these page breaks?

Environment

z/os, Dispatch, blank line, skip, new, page, prevent

Resolution

Dispatch is a page processing system. It needs to be able to determine where the end of a page is. That is why it inserts page breaks after a default number of lines if it doesn't find any page breaks in a dataset it is processing.

It's likely a rare occasion that Dispatch processes a report that truly does not contain any skip to channel 1 or other form of a page break control character but should it encounter one, the only way to prevent Dispatch from inserting carriage control is to...

Define the report as graphics data by setting the "Passthru (Y/N) ==>" flag for the report (on the VRDMU110 screen) to a 'Y'. By setting PASSTHRU=Y, the data should come out of Dispatch the same way it went in and we should not insert any page breaks.

- NOTE however, there are some limitations that go along with using the PASSTHRU=Y setting that you need to be aware of.

Limitations when defining a report as PASSTHRU=Y are:

• The reports can NOT be sent to Online Viewing.
• The reports will be in their OWN bundles.
• You can not perform PAGE SELECTION against the report.
• You may not be able have Dispatch separator pages on the output bundle.