The Spool Print Facility Of The Graphics Control Program - IBM 3270 G Manual

The Spool Print Facility of the Graphics Control Program
The Graphics Control Program provides a spool print facility that enables
users to create a print file for subsequent printing. The Graphics Control
Program also provides a utility for printing it. This utility runs as a PC
DOS application program. The main features of this process are:
• Print files are created by pressing the Print key at the work station
while in work station control mode.
• The print file that is created (on disk or diskette) is a graphics picture
interchange format file. Alphanumeric data in the picture being
printed is treated as graphics character strings.
• A print file can be created for a host application program, a PC DOS
application program that is using the graphics procedure interface, or
for a notepad. A print file can also be a snapshot copy of the current
work station display, with multiple applications and the boundaries
between them, but in this case only the alphanumeric data on the
screen is sent to the print file.
• The PC DOS print utility can be invoked by the operator to print the
file at any convenient time. Host sessions can still run while printing is
in progress.
• Options of the print utility allow it to be invoked to print all print files
or just a named one. If the utility is already running when a new print
file is created, printing of the new file can start automatically.
• Because the print file is in picture interchange format, it can be saved,
sent by file transfer to the host, or processed by other PC DOS
application programs.
The various printing facilities described above are summarized in
Figure 28.
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Introducing the IBM 3270 Personal Computer/G and /GX Work Stations