Robert Backmore writes:

> I am trying to reduce the amount of printed reports from the HP3000.  I
>  am running jobs which instead of printing the report, create the report
>  into a serial file.  Then I transfer it to our Windows-NT server via
>  FTP.
>
>  What i need is a tool to read the report from PC's using Windows.  I
>  have used WORDPAD which can handle large files and has a 'find'
>  facility.  I think WORDPAD is good, however my users what to see the
>  entire report (132 chars) on the screen, and do not wish to scroll to
>  the right to view all of the report.
>
>  Does anyone know of some software which i could use?

This is going very much like a broken record -- and I greatly apologize for
that -- but I think that the new QCTerm terminal emulator may work very well
for you as an on-line report viewer, without you having to go to all of the
trouble of downloading anything to an auxiliary piece of equipment.

If you write your output to flat files on the HP3000, I presume that you know
that on MPE/iX you can cause a flat file to be printed out to your terminal's
screen by simply typing:

     print filename

The new, not-quite-ready-for-release QCTerm terminal emulator has several
display windows, one of which grabs as much screen area as you have
available, based on your current display size. We programmed up this display
window precisely for the purposes of looking at the display of a large
report.

If your PC is set to a 600 x 800 display, the window provides 38 visible rows
x 127 characters. If the PC is set to 738 x 1024, the window is 53 rows x 165
characters (which is still surprisingly readable, even on a 13" display). In
either circumstance, QCTerm always maintains 600 rows of displayable
information, thus if you set your print command, with its optional page break
parameter, as:

     print filename;page=590

the print command will print out either the entire file onto the terminal's
screen -- or the first 590 lines before the print command asks if you would
like to continue, whichever comes first. The command above could be quite
easily set up in a UDC so that the user only has to type:

     p filename

The terminal has CTRL+F "Find" capabilities for high-speed searches of all of
the displayed text. And we programmed up several different screen color
motifs that make reading small print on a CRT easier than just black on
white. The one I personally like best for this purpose is a medium brown text
color on a cream-colored background (for 16-bit color palettes or higher).

The broken record part of all of this is that QCTerm isn't available yet --
but it will be soon. And, of course, it will be free for the downloading.
There's no charge of any sort, nor or there any strings or any sort attached
(other than you can't sue us if it doesn't work for you; QCTerm is as-is
software, without any form of warranty implied or expressed).

In the interim, before QCTerm's long-awaited release (truly sometime in the
very near future), you can see an actual screen capture of a portion of
QCTerm's small font display (which would be the font that you would use for
large-area reports) and see if you think that it would work for you. A URL
that contains such a screen image is:

     http://aics-research.com/qcterm/termphil.html

Wirt Atmar