> I need to mail merge a letter that then gets printed on my > VSE line printer. > We have been using an old Fortran program for this.
If you've got the source to the Fortran program and you don't want to change anything, the steps will look something like this: Install the gf77 compiler on Linux. FTP the Fortran source to Linux and the data files and compile the Fortran with gf77 program.f If the program uses unit number-based I/O you'll need to read the GF77 docs to indicate how to associate files with unit numbers, or modify the Fortran to explicitly open the file and associate it with a unit number. Run the program. Print the output with LPR. If you don't mind some additional changes (and want a nicer looking letter), you may want to modify your Fortran program to emit troff commands (troff is a text formatter like DCF) to make the letters and then postprocess the output file with troff. troff will allow you to use all the features of your printer, produce Postscript or PCL output, and generate a lot of useful other stuff. There are macro packages included with troff (I'd suggest using the mm macros-- they're easy and well documented.) Your output letter might look like: .MT 5 .ND date of letter .WA writers name return address .WE .IA recipients address .IE .LO RN " in reference string" .LO AT attention line .LO SA salutation .LO SJ subject line .LT .P text of the letter with .P on a line by itself between paragraphs .FC text of closing and then you run the output file through 'troff -mm output.file | dvips | lpr -Pyour fave printer' and you get a very nicely formatted letter to print on your postscript printer. If you want plain text, use dvitty instead of dvips. The MM macros do the work of formatting and constructing the letter. See the AT&T Documentor's Workshop manuals or "man mm" for details. -- db
