I changed the first print line to start lower on the form for better looking alignment. I also finally figured out how to use the python module PyPDF2 to crop a little off the left side of the form (thanks to a YouTube video) for better symmetry as well as removing the pesky 1st blank page which I had done previously.
At this point I think I’ve achieved, for my purposes, a fairly good representation of the classic Mainframe greenbar listing. I said almost a year ago that I probably wouldn’t do much more. But I chipped away every now and then tweaking it here and there. If the superior commercial HercPrt program was available for Linux I’m sure I would have paid the modest price to acquire it, but it is MS-Windows only. A side benefit for my little program is I can give gnuCOBOL listings that same nostalgic look. And possibly others.
There maybe one more change I may make (isn’t there always?)…allow the option to print on bluebar. I already have a boolean in the program to allow this…but currently I have to manually change the program. See the PL/I program below for an example.
Obviously this is something that adds no real value to emulation or programming. It’s sole purpose is to add a nostalgic feel. However, for me it helps recreate that feel of a much earlier time. At one time, before terminals, when mainframe input was by punch cards, a greenbar listing was the primary way of looking at Mainframe output. Programmers spent a lot of time looking at greenbar listings.
Out of curiosity I downloaded the PL/I compiler from Iron Spring Software that can run on Linux and strangely OS/2 Warp (which was last released 18 years ago in 2001). PL/I is a language that originated on IBM mainframes in the 1960s. I don’t know anything about PL/I. But I attempted to compile a sample program. It apparently created a MS-Windows exe, but no valid Linux program. Anywho it did create a listing file, which I was mostly interested in anyway. Below is the result of processing that file with my greenbar program. I made no changes to the program and this was the result of my 1st test with this output. For fun I changed the green to another apparently popular color…blue!
PL/I example