Hi Mike,
No. We would have wasted too many labels . W e printed pallets of labels a month in those days and we had to go to bid for the stock. We specified the size of the labels and the surrounding space between the labels - using standard sizes of labels. That way, we could entertain the bids of vendors with different page sizes - distance between the folds. The more level and open the 'playing field' the sharper the bidders pencils get. ;) Most of the vendors perforated the stock between every row of labels. The even and continuous forms let us ignore the folds and not waste any labels. The way the output was blocked allowed us to quickly locate the specific few blocks (1 block = 1 line) that contained a label that needed reprint (using the tape direct to printer unspool) and reprint just that one row of labels. We only unspooled labels to JES2 when it was a very small run. These days, label stock is pretty cheap and most of our labels use cutsheet label stock on a laser printer, a few sheets at a time. We seldom print labels on continous forms anymore. Linda ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Schwab" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, May 5, 2012 11:12:03 AM Subject: Re: Old timer question If they were labels, wouldn't it be a good idea to block by the number of lines in a page? On Sat, May 5, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Linda Mooney <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi John, > > A long time ago, we had a lot of these in my shop. COBOL programs that wrote > labels at 133/133 FA, printed on continous form label stock, generally 3 > labels wide . The RECFM was set in the COBOL program, and that was where it > had to be fixed. > > At that time, the big advantage was that the labels could be unspooled from > tape direct to printer, so it gave the operator very tight control on back > space, etc. if a label peeled off in the printer and needed to be recovered. > If the print ran through JES2, there would always be a lot fewer 'pages' in > the buffer if the printer had to be backspaced there. > > There were some attempts made to change the DCB after the dataset was built, > but they were not successful. I don't know exactly what they tried - I was > at the printing end in those days. > > HTH, > > Linda > -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
