just to clarify Barry's correct response, the only 'magic' about an ENV file
is that the spooler dumps the contents of the ENV= file to the printer
immediately before the contents of the spoofle.
Said file does not need to have any special attributes itself.  This means
that your environment file could be just a line of text saying "hi I'm just
a file" or more practically could contain all the escape sequences you need
to reset the printer, place it in landscape mode, specify fonts, download
signatures, lots of fancy stuff.  The spooler doesn't know or care about its
contents. Thus if
:print mytext
LINE ONE
EOF
:print myenv
HOWDY HOWDY HOWDY
:file X;DEV=LP;ENV=myenv
:fcopy from=mytext;to=*x
you can look at the spoolfile and it will contain a reference to myenv in
the first record, and when you let the spoofle go to LP you'll get
HOWDY HOWDY HOWDY
LINE ONE
EOF


Tracy Pierce GGBHTD

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Barry Lake [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, March 13, 2000 4:26 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Environment files
>
>
> At 6:00 PM -0600 3/13/00, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> >I have a question about environment files. I know what they
> are, but I am
> >not sure how it works. Can someone please help me out. An
> example would
> >really help.
>
>
> We'll assume that you have a correctly formed environment file called
> "myenv". In order to use it to control printer settings, include the
> environment file name in a file equation, and then print to the
> back-referenced file equation.
>
> For example
>
>   :file myreport;dev=lp;env=myenv.pub.myacct
>   :print textfile.pub.myacct >*myreport
>
> The effect will be to create report containing the contents of
> "textfile.pub" that will be formatted using the PCL
> instructions from the
> "myenv.pub" file.
>
> If you have a "vanilla" report (with spool id 667, for
> example) created by
> a program over which you have no control, you can still "redirect" the
> report to a new report that includes additional environment
> information by
> doing something like this
>
>    :file newrpt;dev=ljet;env=myenv.pub
>    :run spiff.pub.sys
>     >copy 667;all, *newrpt
>     >exit
>
> Hope this helps, and good luck!
>
>
> Barry Lake                                 [log in to unmask]
> Allegro Consultants, Inc.                  www.allegro.com
> (408)252-2330
>