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COBOL Report Writer questions

PostPosted: Sat Jul 27, 2019 12:52 am
by tjstotz5dj7
Yes, my organization still has a bunch of old report writer code and I am asked to make some changes to it.
The problem that I am having is that the report I am working with has headers and footers and a control break field.
The print stream is duplexed when sent to the printer from the mainframe. My problem is that the control break starts on the top of the next page, but not always on a new sheet of paper.
I need to break again or use some command to leave a blank page and start the new control field value on a fresh sheet of paper. Nothing that I have tried works very well, and in some cases, I still get the heading on a page before a break happens. We don't have a bunch of modern document composition tools here, because I have used PB Streamweaver to do similar things. Any great ideas would sure be appreciated.

Re: COBOL Report Writer questions

PostPosted: Mon Jul 29, 2019 8:59 pm
by Robert Sample
This does not sound like a Report Writer issue (nor a COBOL issue) but rather a problem with the way the printer is printing the data sent by the mainframe. Perhaps you should review the printer documentation?

Re: COBOL Report Writer questions

PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2019 1:56 am
by tjstotz5dj7
It is a report writer issue, because I need to make it produce what I am looking for. How would you add a separator page whenever a control break happens? If I could do that, I could make it work.

Re: COBOL Report Writer questions

PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2019 3:11 am
by Robert Sample
Can you define column 1 of the control break to be a '1'? The '1' in the first column should force a top-of-page.

Re: COBOL Report Writer questions

PostPosted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 6:57 pm
by Mottas
How does 1 in the first column force a top-of-page? It doesn't work that way in my very similar example.

Re: COBOL Report Writer questions

PostPosted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 7:29 pm
by Robert Sample
Start by reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASA_carri ... characters and note that this is how MAINFRAME printers handle carriage control. If you are using a network / PC printer for mainframe printing, you will need to find out what software is being used to convert the mainframe carriage control to the network / PC carriage control, and how that impacts what you are trying to do.