ETAPE  Rev. 2.6  19-Sep-1989


ETAPE is a general-purpose program for handling EBCDIC, ASCII, and Honeywell
GCOS BCD tapes. It allows the user to move around at will within the tape,
send output to different files, specify different blocksizes and record
lengths for different files on the tape, and combine multiple tape files
into a single output file.
Special translation can be performed on tapes which have embedded packed
decimal or binary fields.
The capability of writing EBCDIC or ASCII tapes from VMS ASCII files is also
included.

ETAPE removes all trailing blanks from tape records after reading them.
On output, records will be blank padded and blocked to create fixed length
tape blocks. A switch can be set to turn off the EBCDIC translation and
allow the translation (or writing) of ASCII tapes.



			Enhancements
			============

The major enhancements since the previous submission include:
	Reading ANSI and IBM variable record formats
	Specification files to allow processing of non-character data (packed
	    decimal and binary)
	Output density selection

			Installation
			============

ETAPE is comprised of the following files:

	AAAREADME.TXT		This file
	ETAPE.EXE		Executable for ETAPE 
	ETAPE.FOR		Source program & subroutines
	ETAPE.HLP		Help file for the program
	ETAPE.CLD		Command language for ETAPE
	ETAPE_INCLUDE.FOR	Include file for fortran code


The following procedure is used to build ETAPE:

	$ FORT ETAPE
	$ LINK ETAPE
	$ COPY ETAPE.EXE SYS$COMMON:[SYSEXE]ETAPE.EXE
	$ LIB/HELP/REPL/LOG SYS$HELP:HELPLIB ETAPE
	$ SET COMMAND ETAPE

			Known Errors / Limitations
			==========================

To use ETAPE, a user must possess LOG_IO amd PHY_IO privilege or ETAPE must be
installed with those privileges.

Writing of multi-reel tapes is not supported.

I'm sure there are bugs, but I don't know what they are.  If you
find one, please let me know.



Please direct all comments, criticisms, and especially praise to:

	Dale Miller
	University of Arkansas at Little Rock
	Data Center NS204
	2801 S. University Ave.
	Little Rock, AR 72204-1099
	(501) 569-8714
	DOMILLER@UALR.BITNET