Device Type

Device Type "type" Gives Users Control of 99 Printers At Once

Unibase by DMAC has always allowed the user to have up to 99 different devices referenced by a single program. Any user who tried to use these devices as printers, they quickly found that spooling would not work. Data came out mixed together like spaghetti.

The BC technical people, and management too, specified for DMAC how they thought it should have been implemented in the first place since they had lived with the same problem these last four years on a different system.

Client Supplied Workable Solution

Here is the way we at DMAC wish we could have thought it up years ago. We hope you continue to think better late than never.

A new type of device - "type" has been added to the current list of device types -- printer, tape, test, disk, comm, or output.

"type" Device is Like A "comm" Device

This device behaves like a current "comm" device with the following addition if it is addressed using the "type <loc xx>" verb.

In Device Table Maintenance the line called "Initialization Script" has been changed to "Begin/End Script Name." On this line the user puts the name of a bat, cmd, or script file which is called by drun with two parameters. The first parameter indicates when the file is being called - 1 means at device opening, 2 means that the program is finished, and 3 means the control function <finish> has been used. The second parameter is the device path name for that device in the device table.

Normally the bat, cmd, or script file will truncate the file when called with the first parameter set to 1. When the bat, cmd, or script file is called with the first parameter set to 2 or 3 then the device file can be redirected to a spooler, a terminal emulation package, or a printer. In this way, all of the file is treated as a single piece for the ultimate destination. No more will various files sent to spooled devices by the type statement be intermixed with each other.