Conference 7.286::postscript_printing

7201.0. "LN14's ERROR:syntaxerror with OFFENDING COMMAND" by GIDDAY::LEH () Thu May 15 1997 04:18

VMS/AXP 6.1

A landscape document generated by WPS-PLUS, when printed on a LN14 printer 
produced this error

	ERROR: syntaxerror
        OFFENDING COMMAND: To provide a prompt and efficient compensation..
        STACK

        -savelevel-

Note the value given by "OFFENDING COMMAND:" was in fact a text line
on page 3 of a 25-page document

The printer hardware/firmware status report showed

o RAM: 3Mb
o Firmware version: 
	PostScript/PCL 5 version: 2014.103
  	Firmware level: 76
o Fonts: 
	PostScript: 35
	PCL: 20
o Other settings:
	Resolution: 600 x 600 DPI
	Print Enhancement Technology: Medium

and the queue settings were essentially

Terminal queue XXXXXX idle, on XXXXXX::LTA60:, mounted form DEFAULT
(stock=DEFAULT)
......
  /DEFAULT=(FEED,FORM=DEFAULT) /PROCESSOR=LATSYM

I obtained the source PS file and printed to an internal LN14 confirued with 
DCPS$SMB and it worked fine.

Customer first had print problem inside ALL-IN-1; so a test was done by 
obtaining the output to a disk file (i.e. not printing directly to the queue 
but producing the disk output file) , then $ PRINT this file from DCL. Same 
problem existed. 

The involved PS source file can be found as

RIPPER::USER$TSC:[LEH.CORE]Q50092.PS;1       168 blocks      (RWED,RWED,RE,RE)

Thanks for any help

Hong

LATSYM is not a reliable PostScript symbiont.
My first guess would be that LATSYM is inserting line feeds or form feeds
into the file to force its expectations of page formatting.
The reported errant line is quite long, over 132 characters (there are four
lines in the file longer than 132 characters).  This is exactly the kind
of boundary LATSYM looks for.

However, "syntaxerror" is a rather unusual PostScript error for this situation.
Normally it applies to broken constructs like unterminated procedure
bodies or quoted strings, so there is a possible connection here.

But the bottomn line is that LATSYM is NOT a robust PostScript-capable
symbiont.  If someone MUST use LATSYM, make it as clean and non-intrusive
as possible, removing autowrapping of lines and pages and making sure that
no characters get stripped (escape sequences and control characters).

- tom]

    Tom
    
    Your assessment of the problem is spot on as the customer has been
    manually padding spaces to work around the problem.
    
    They're testing DECprint Supervisor, as suggested
    
    Many thanks
    
    Hong