Requesting printer information with the PSF startup procedure

You use a DD statement in the PSF startup procedure to specify the data set where the printer characteristics information is written for each printer defined in the startup procedure. PSF creates a member in the data set for each printer. The member name in the data set is the printer FSA name, such as PRT612. Before you specify the data set in the DD statement, you must allocate a partitioned data set (PDS). After information is saved to the data set, you can view and print the printer information report.

Allocating the partitioned data set

You must allocate the PDS as "PDSE" to reduce problems with insufficient directory blocks and storage space and to allow multiple FSAs to open the data set without a system abend. IBM® recommends that the PDS have the attributes specified in Table 24.

Specifying the DD statement

Figure 52 shows the format of the DD statement you use for saving printer information to a data set. The DD name for the PRTINFO data set must always be PRTINFO. The data set name can be anything you want; however, IBM suggests that you use the name of the startup procedure and the PRTINFO qualifier to accurately identify the information that the data set contains. You should also use DISP=SHR to let multiple PSF FSAs simultaneously write printer information to the data set.

//PRTINFO    DD   DSNAME=fssname.prtinfo,DISP=SHR

Figure 53 shows the DD statement used to display printer information for a printer when the FSS name is APSWPROT.

//PRTINFO    DD DSNAME=APSWPROT.PRTINFO,DISP=SHR

Viewing and printing the report

After the printer information is saved to the data set, you can view the softcopy report (see Softcopy report for an example of the source data). You can also format the softcopy report and print it as a hardcopy report.

To generate a hardcopy printer information report, use these IBM-supplied page and form definitions to format the softcopy report:

Page definition

P1DPI01

Form definition

F1DPI01

The page definition uses PPFA record formatting to define the resulting printer information report. It also uses proportional spaced and monospaced, sans-serif fonts from AFP Font Collection Version 2. Because the report contains unprintable characters returned by the printer for some fields, IBM recommends that you specify DATACK=BLOCK in your print request to avoid messages about incorrect characters.

Figure 54 shows an example of a job stream that formats the softcopy printer information report for printing as a hardcopy report.

//JOB1      JOB    ...
//STEP1     EXEC   PGM=IEBGENER  
//SYSPRINT  DD     SYSOUT=*  
//SYSIN     DD     DUMMY  
//OUTRL     OUTPUT PAGEDEF=DPI01,FORMDEF=DPI01,DATACK=BLOCK  
//SYSUT2    DD     SYSOUT=*, OUTPUT=*.OUTRL  
//SYSUT1    DD     DSN=APSWPROT.PRTINFO(PRT612),DISP=SHR         

For an example of a hardcopy printer information report, see Hardcopy report.