Thus it was written in the epistle of Mark Bixby,
>
> Please post your code so we can see what you're trying, including the "ugly
> kludge".  I promise not to laugh; I've done enough ugly Perl kludges of my
> own over the years.  ;-)

Aargh!  Ungrateful thing!  The least it could do after all my trouble is fail
again as it did so many times before.  Now that I've stuck my neck out, I can't
replicate the problem.  I had moved on and gotten the program working while
waiting for a reply and didn't keep a copy.  Oh, well.

I *am* getting weirdness (but a kind I've never seen before) if I do a

build MYFILE;spool;cctl

and then in perl

open(OUT,'>>MYFILE');

and

write OUT;

Not only is it not taking the first character of each line as cctl (which was,
of course, the hope), but it's sticking in %320 cctl every 18 lines or so.
Not sure why that is.

Anywho.  I've cleaned up my kludge a bit and I'm pretty happy with it now.
What I do is open up a bytestream file (it's fine to just let perl create it).
I immediately print an 'A' to the file.  That will swith it into pre-spacing
on print.  Then I set $^L='1'.  That does page ejects where appropriate.  And
I make sure that every line of my format except the first one starts with a
space.  Once I've created the file, I

:FCOPY from=MYFILE;to=*LP;CCTL

and voila! printing with cctl.  I haven't done it in this job, but in others
I've included other cctl characters as the first character of my lines and it
works well.

> PS: There is a bug in the sh.hpbin.sys built-in cat command that will result
> in missing bytes.  The workaround is to use the external /bin/cat command
> instead.

I may have been bit by this a little, though it doesn't explain all of what I
saw.  Under what conditions do the characters disappear?  Also, have you ever
used /bin/lp to print?

Ted
--
Ted Ashton ([log in to unmask]), Info Serv, Southern Adventist University
          ==========================================================
How then shall mathematical concepts be judged? They shall not be judged.
Mathematics is the supreme arbiter. From its decisions there is no appeal.
We cannot change the rules of the game, we cannot ascertain whether the game
is fair. We can only study the player at his game; not, however, with the
detached attitude of a bystander, for we are watching our own minds at play.
                                        -- Dantzig