SCS Printer Data Stream
The SCS printer data stream is a sequential data stream specifically oriented toward line printers. The data stream consists of characters and commands. The characters are printed according to the attributes and formatting information specified by the control commands. How each SCS character is printed depends on the control commands that precede it.
RPM Remote Print Manager® can interpret SCS codes and EBCDIC and translate them to ASCII. For non-text printing (pass-through and filter) RPM creates line-oriented output using carriage return for overstrikes as appropriate. For text output RPM preserves the SCS markup and reproduces attributes such as margins, font size, character position, etc.
How to SCS print
The first step to printing your SCS data, however you define "print", is to use the SCS to text markup transform. This will translate your SCS data stream into text markup, which is something we can use in RPM for a variety of outputs:
- you can generate a PDF with high fidelity to the intended output
- you can print to a Windows printer using RPM's text printing action
- you can translate to PCL and print to any PCL compatible printer, on Windows or not
- you can even remove the text markup and generate a plain text version of your SCS document, in case that is interesting to you
Benefits to using RPM for SCS translation
The primary benefit to moving SCS rendering off the host computer is reduced AS/400 CPU time. Clients have reported print times reduced from minutes to seconds, though results will vary depending on the host utilization. Secondary benefits include the ability to capture to disk using an RPM filter queue; and support for country-specific extensions to EBCDIC.