Re: lp5250 and "bypass code"

Ok, I've implemented this in perl, as a one liner:

perl -n -e "while
(s/&%([0-9a-fA-F]{2})(([0-9a-fA-F]{2})*)&%/@{[chr(hex($1))]}&%$2&%/g) {
};s/&%&%//g;print;" 

But, as noted in the source comments, pipes don't perform very well in
windows.  I don't even know how to install a pipe for a windows printer.

I guess I can implement it with a state machine in the c source, but I
don't think c has functions like chr and hex.

By the way, thank you all, very much, for all the work that has gone
into writing this software.

John Chambers

-----Original Message-----
From: linux5250-bounces-Zwy7GipZuJhWk0Htik3J/[email protected]
[mailto:linux5250-bounces-Zwy7GipZuJhWk0Htik3J/[email protected]] On Behalf Of Scott Klement
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 1:25 PM
To: Linux 5250 Development Project
Subject: Re: [LINUX5250] lp5250 and "bypass code"

On 10/29/2010 12:01 PM, John Chambers wrote:
> Does anyone here know what a "bypass code" is?  Or how to implement it

> on lp5250d for windows?
>

A "bypass code" is a way to send printer escape codes to a printer
without worrying about them being fouled up by the printer emulation
software (which converts from IBM printer language to the actual printer
language) or the ASCII/EBCDIC translation process.

They used a sequence of &% as a toggle to switch into and out of
'bypass' mode.  from there, anything received is in hex. It will be used
to fashion actual bytes to be sent as-is to the printer.  So for
example, you might have this:

&%090a0b&%

The leading &% goes into bypass mode.  The 09 (two characters) is used
to create a byte containing 0x09, and that's sent to the printer as-is. 
  Likewise the 0a is converted to 0x0a, and the 0b is converted to 0x0b,
and they are sent to the printer as-is.  The &% ends bypass mode, and
things go back to normal until the next &% appears.

Frankly, the whole thing was a kludge.  A more proper (and IBM blessed)
solution would be to use Host Print Transform.  Or at least use SCS
transparency codes if you _must_ send raw escape sequences to the
printer.

I-O Corporation used these bypass codes extensively in their devices....

  I have written software that works with lp5250d to emulate the way I-O
handled them.

Unfortunately, my software is for FreeBSD, not Windows.  And I developed
it under contract, and cannot give it away.  But it wasn't terribly
difficult to write -- you should be able to write your own.
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