Leonard writes:
> Is there a utility on the HP3000 that can be used to strip off the ENV
> records from spoolfiles?

Which kind of ENVironment file?  There are at least three that I know of,
and they have somewhat different effects on the spoolfile.

The following is from memory as I don't have any time to try it, so
corrections are welcomed as always:

The 2680/2688 EPOC Page Printers were the original reason for Environment
files, and these files (of filecode PENV) get copied into the spoolfile at
creation time in the form of special FDEVICECONTROL records that encapsulate
the I/O operations needed to send the data to the printer when the file is
printed.  Virtually all modern spooler drivers will ignore (or simply not
see) these records, which is why they don't cause problems when printing to
network printers.  However these are often the largest environment files,
and their use can result in spoolfiles taking a lot of extra disk space.

You can create a TermType TT file (filecode TTYPE) with TTUTIL.PUB.SYS and
reference this file using ;ENV=, which I believe adds a single special
FDEVICECONTROL-like record to the spoolfile at creation time that contains
the name of the file.  These files can contain Vertical Forms Control (VFC)
data which is/was used by some printer drivers.  This is either used
properly or ignored by all current spoolers.

The 2608S printers used their own kind of VFC files that were sent to the
printer with the :DOWNLOAD command.  I forget whether these could also be
used with ;ENV= or not.

The modern PCL-type of environment file is, I think, just a raw file full of
data which when referenced on a ;ENV= just causes the data to be written as
the first data in the spoolfile when it is created.  Once the data from this
type of "environment file" is added to a spoolfile, there's no easy way to
tell it apart from "real" data that your application wrote.  Thus there's no
simple method to remove it.

> We have NBSPOOL, but the promising DUP spoolfile;NOENV -- looked
> promising, but it did not do what I expected.

I assume you mean ALTER spoolfile;NOENV?  This should work for 2680 and TT
type environment files, but maybe not for the more modern PCL type that
might result in embedded data in the spoolfile rather than a reference to a
TT file or FDEVICECONTROL records containing the EPOC environment download.

Try doing:

O> LIST 1/10 CCTL

and let us know what that looks like.  It should be enough to see what kind
of ENV is involved.

> We do not seem to have a manual <sigh>

   http://docs.hp.com/mpeix/pdf/B3933-90002.pdf

G.

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