Using APSRMARK to mark resources

Resources are marked as PUBLIC or PRIVATE by using a PSF utility called APSRMARK. A mark of PUBLIC instructs PSF to look for a printer-resident version of the resource first, and, if none is found, to download the host resource. A mark of PRIVATE (or no mark at all) instructs PSF to download the host resource.

System programmers generally use APSRMARK to mark new or updated resources. In addition to marking resources such as overlays, page segments, and fonts for DPF, APSRMARK also can be used to mark fonts for resident font activation or capture by the printer.

If you edit a marked resource by using an AFP utility program, such as OGL, but do not alter the original mark, the new version is not downloaded. If you edit a marked resource and delete the original mark, the new version of the resource is considered PRIVATE and is downloaded. If you use APSRMARK to mark the new version of the resource as PUBLIC, that resource is time- and date-stamped by APSRMARK. The next time a job uses that resource, the new host version has a more recent stamp than the current resident version, and therefore the version is downloaded and saved again.

Because the time- and date-stamp for PUBLIC resources are always compared, you are assured of getting the most recent host version of a resource if you use standard IBM® utilities for creating your resources. If you do not use an IBM utility to directly update the resource object code for a marked resource, however, you can circumvent the process. If you update the resource without deleting or changing the APSRMARK time- and date-stamp, PSF cannot differentiate between your updated resource and the resident version and uses the resident version instead of the updated version.

For more information about using APSRMARK, see PSF for z/OS: Customization, or see your system programmer.