TS-497

CREATING A GRAPHICS STREAM FILE (GSF) ON THE MAINFRAME SUITABLE FOR DOWNLOADING TO A PC

Question:

I have a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printer attached to my PC, and I want to produce IBM mainframe SAS/GRAPH output on my printer. How can I create a graphics stream file (GSF) on the mainframe which I can download to my PC and then send to my HP LaserJet or another ASCII printer?

Answer:

To produce IBM mainframe SAS/GRAPH output on an ASCII printer attached to your PC, follow these steps:

1. Create a graphics stream file (GSF) on the mainframe.

   Use the following SAS/GRAPH program as a guideline when creating a graphics stream file on the mainframe:

   
         filename gsasfile 'host-file-name' lrecl=132 recfm=vb;
   
         goptions device    = driver_name
                  gaccess   = gsasfile
                  gprotocol = sasgpasc
                  gsflen    = 128
                  gsfmode   = replace;
   
         * Test graph follows;
         title 'SAS/GRAPH Test';
         proc gslide;
         run; quit;
         * End test graph;
   
         filename gsasfile clear;
   
   

   If you are using a SAS/GRAPH PostScript driver for the driver_name parameter and are running on the MVS operating system, add trantab=gtabcms to your GOPTIONS statement.

2. Download the GSF to your PC as a binary file.

   Once you have created the GSF on the mainframe, download the GSF to your PC as a binary file. Downloading the GSF as a binary file means that no EBCDIC-to-ASCII translation is performed during the download and that no carriage return or line feed characters are added to the GSF.

3. Send the GSF to your printer.

   Once the GSF has been successfully downloaded to your PC, use the DOS COPY command to send the GSF to your printer:

   
            COPY /B filename.ext port
   

   The /B indicates to the DOS COPY command that the file to be printed is a binary file and should be copied to the appropriate communications port "as is".

   For example, if the GSF on the PC is named SASGRAF.GSF and your printer is attached to LPT1, issue the following COPY command:

   
            COPY /B SASGRAF.GSF LPT1:
   

   If you are sending the GSF to a local LPT port, you may need to set an "infinite retry" on the port first by specifying:

   
            MODE LPT1:,,P
   

   In certain situations, failure to issue the MODE command may result in incomplete graphs or may result in error messages from the COPY command.

These instructions can be used when producing mainframe SAS/GRAPH output on any ASCII hardcopy graphics device attached to any ASCII-based operating system. As long as you do either a binary download or a binary transfer to your ASCII-based operating system, you can successfully produce mainframe graphics output on any ASCII graphics device which SAS/GRAPH supports.