[Info-vax] DCPS and gray-bar output

[Paul Anderson]

In article <alpine.LFD.2.00.0901291249400.17904 at libra.gmcl.internal>,
 Rob Brown <mylastname at gmcl.com> wrote:

> Suppose MUMBLE.TXT is a plain ASCII text file with no escape 
> sequences, and suppose that "TXT" is *not* in 
> DCPS$FILE_EXTENSION_DATA_TYPE.DAT. If I print MUMBLE.TXT without 
> specifying a data type, is MUMBLE.TXT printed as ANSI?  Or as some 
> other data type?

The short answer to your question is it would most likely print as an 
ANSI file.

The long answer involves listing the sequence of criteria that 
determines how a file is printed.

  1.  Data type specified by user
  2.  Data type on queue
  3.  File tag
  4.  Value of DCPS$queuename_DEFAULT_TRANSLATOR logical name
  5.  Value of DCPS$DEFAULT_TRANSLATOR logical name
  6.  File extension as found in
      SYS$LIBRARY:DCPS$FILE_EXTENSION_DATA_TYPE.DAT
  7.  Sniff up to 2048 bytes of file for identifying patterns for PDLs

So if you got to criteria 6 and .TXT wasn't defined there (as it is not 
by default), DCPS would sniff the file to see if it contained patterns 
that would identify it as a PostScript, ANSI, PCL 4, ReGIS, DDIF, 
Proprinter or Tektronix file.  If MUMBLE.TXT contained none of those 
patterns, it would print as an ANSI file (since ANSI is the default 
translator unless you've set it to something else [see #5 above]).

Paul

-- 
 Paul Anderson
  OpenVMS Engineering
  Hewlett-Packard Company