Skip to Main Content
IBM Power Ideas Portal


This portal is to open public enhancement requests against IBM Power Systems products, including IBM i. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).


Shape the future of IBM!

We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:

Search existing ideas

Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,

Post your ideas
  1. Post an idea.

  2. Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.

  3. Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.


Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use

Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.

IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.

ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.

Status Future consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories Print
Created by Guest
Created on Jun 7, 2020

Provide CCSID paramater on CPYSPLF

Provide a STMFCCSID parameter on the CPYSPLF command when using the TOSTMF option. Now the stream file is created with the job CCSID being EBCDIC instead of ASCII.


Use Case:

When converting spooled output to text files for further processing the stream file is not readable on PC as it has an EBCDIC CCSID. Just like CPYTOSTMF and other commands a STMFCCSID parameter would solve this issue.


Idea priority Medium
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Oct 14, 2020

    .You make a good point, and we will add it to our list of future enhancements to consider. Currently, there are several significant print enhancements ranked as a higher priority than this one.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Jun 28, 2020

    Various functions (like almost all new SQL functions) can be achieved by existing options (ie. API's)... so it is a bit strange to read this as a new argument for not implementing missing functionality, especially since almost all commands that support a stream file as output have a codepage parameter.

    Building the functionality with the two commands requires an additional file which causes again some overhead which we try to avoid.
    In addition it might generate extra audit entries which we again try to avoid, target is to keep code as clean as possible. Same for the WSCST, while it works this is not something you can rely on when deploying code to a remote system.

    We therefore prefer a clean soutions without intermediate steps like all other commands with stream file support.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Jun 16, 2020

    The function requested can already be achieved by using the CPYSPLF command without the *TOSTMF option to copy the spooled file to a DB file, followed by the CPYTOSTMF command with the CVTDTA parameters.

    We are reluctant to duplicate all the conversion parameters and backing code already provided by the CPYTOSTMF command.

    There are also text conversions implied with several of the *WSCST objects that can be specified in the WSCST parameter. For example, if you specify the QWPDEFAULT *WSCST object in QSYS, the text data will be converted to ASCII based on the conventions used by the QwpzHostPrintTransform API. Granted, the default conversions are very poor for some EBCDIC CCSIDs, but the WSCST can be modified with :EBCASCTBLE tags to convert any EBCDIC code page accurately. These are documented in the Basic Printing document in the IBM i KnowledgeCenter: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_74/rzalu/rzalupdf.pdf?view=kc#%5B%7B%22num%22%3A184%2C%22gen%22%3A0%7D%2C%7B%22name%22%3A%22XYZ%22%7D%2C47.8942%2C688.479%2Cnull%5D

    Please let us know why one of these alternate methods would not suffice.