it appears that ATE is adding an additional formfeed. is there anyway to correct this?

i'm using ATE version 1183.1. i'm on a UNIX server using LPT##.ini with the DEVICE=AUXLOC: i have an ascii file with one word followed by a single formfeed (which is required to print to other network printers on our system). when the print command is issued, ATE creates a temp file C:\...\APEX\tskaay-1.000 which is then printed to the printer. this file is a copy of the original file that is being printed from the system, with the exception that it contains an additional formfeed at the end of the file.

Any help on how to strip that extra formfeed from being added would be greatly appreciated.

Jason

sorry, this post should be under ATE, not windows.

oh yeah, and, my ATE Print settings include the options: PassThrough. and Trailing FF is turned off. and from what i can tell, when i turn Trailing FF = on, 1 extra formfeed is added to the original file. so it appears that turning the "Trailing FF" option to OFF does not work perhaps as is should

Even though you seem to have provided plenty of details, I can't seem to reproduce this here.

My test was with A-Shell/AIX 5.1.1191, although I have no reason to suspect that this was a recent change on the server side.

Still, the fact that you can see the extra FF i the temp file suggests that it is the server side adding it, since as far as I can tell, ATE does not have any logic to add a form feed to the end of the file as it writes it to disk. The Trailing FF option in the ATE printer dialog simply controls whether the FORMFEED option in the dynamically-created ATE-side printer init file is set to ON or OFF. In theory, turning it on should result in another blank page, but not another FF in the temp file. (It wasn't clear if that's what you meant in your last paragraph.)

Factors which might affect this issue would be:

- Version of A-Shell on server
- Version of ATE
- Contents of the printer init file on the server
- How you spooled the file (i.e. can it be reproduced with a PRINT command line?)
- Type of printer (laser vs matrix)

But before getting into that, my first suggestion would be to add FORMFEED=OFF to the printer init file on the server side, i.e.:

DEVICE=AUXLOC:
FORMFEED=OFF

Otherwise, the server will add a FF to the end of the file, if the last character in the file is not already FF. You say your last character was already FF, so I'm not sure what to make of that. (To make sure, use SET HEX and then DUMP ).

If that doesn't bring about a quick solution, if it would be possible for me to hook up to the server and print the file back to my copy of ATE, that might get us to the bottom of it quicker. (In which case email me the details.)