z/OS v1.9, Waterloo Script v9.8.1 (includes GML) here.
Our Student Information System has been using Waterloo Script/GML since before
I started in the late '80s.
All letters to students - primarily offers of admissions, transcripts, et al -
are generated from coded paragraphs ie. student Alice needs para 1 (welcome), 5
(insufficient documents), 17 - 20 (offer based on preliminary Ontario Secondary
marks only), along with the ability to add unique text/paragraphs ("Welcome to
Canada's University", "The Dean would like to meet when you arrive").
PostScript output is generated from Script "meta" output and squirted to laser
printers. The daily bulk run can create 10s to 1000s of multi-page letters
(including tray selection: 1st page -> letterhead, 2nd+ -> plain paper)
depending on time of year. (Create a letter today for printing on a future
date.) Plus, the Cics system will submit an individual batch job (awkward,
yes, but Natural/Cics doesn't do direct to spool) to route the output to your
co-located, office printer.
Unfortunately, over the years fixes by less experienced programmers have tended
toward Script commands (.br, .in +5, .in -5, etc.) rather than working within
the more elegant, original GML (:ul, :li, :eul) macros leading to a fair
hatchet job when the next person tries to diagnose the next printing problem.
(being a bilingual institution, we *still* get problems related to accents.)
As I understand it, this 'correspondence' functionality is one of the stumbling
blocks to moving the system off z/OS. None of the potential packages/platforms
seem to be able to do all the same work or as well.
ps. I, too, liked GML; enough to write the Payroll Operations manual for the
production control group using it. It's great to be able to add footnotes,
endnotes, index/glossary entries, forward & backward references (with
auto-magic page numbering if it's elsewhere Page numbering? "We don't do no
stinkin' page numbers!") including text. Change the name of a
chapter/section/paragraph? If you tagged it properly, *all* your references
auto-magically altered. (Of course, it's post-processed like HTML. What you
see *ain't* what you get. Tho' the ISPF panels allow you to trial it somewhat.)
----------> signature = 6 lines follows <--------------
Neil Duffee, Joe SysProg, U d'Ottawa, Ottawa, Ont, Canada
telephone:1 613 562 5800 x4585 fax:1 613 562 5161
mailto:NDuffee of uOttawa.ca http:/ /aix1.uottawa.ca/ ~nduffee
"How *do* you plan for something like that?" Guardian Bob, Reboot
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism."
"Systems Programming: Guilty, until proven innocent" John Norgauer 2004
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Linda Mooney [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: July 3, 2010 20:17
> Subject: Re: GML
>
> And to think, I stayed with GML as long as I could because,
> once one passed the learning curve, GML was really fast to
> write [snip]
>
> I never knew GML could be used under TSO. [snip]
> Is it still available?
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