OSI/FTAM Programming Guide

NonStop FTAM Programming
HP NonStop OSI/FTAM Programming Guide—528612-001
3-19
FTAM-1 Files
STRINGSIG-NOTSIG (not significant), ZFTM-VAL-STRINGSIG-VARIABLE (variable),
and ZFTM-VAL-STRINGSIG-FIXED (fixed).
For not-significant string-significance, it does not matter whether you place the data in
one or multiple data elements because the boundaries of character strings do not
necessarily contribute to a document’s semantics. Instead, document semantics is
preserved by format effectors (characters such as carriage returns and line feeds,
which control the formatting of information on character-imaging devices).
The universal-class of this string encoding depends on the universal-class
parameter proposed by the FTM_OPEN_REQ_ or FTM_FILE_OPEN_REQ_
procedure or returned in the contents-type parameter by the FTM_OPEN_CNF_ or
FTM_FILE_OPEN_CNF_ procedure. If the string-significance is not significant, to
ensure that your file can be properly read, we recommend that you use a universal
class with format effectors, that is, 21 (ZFTM-VAL-UC-VIDEOTEX-STRING), 22
(ZFTM-VAL-UC-IA5-STRING), or 27 (ZFTM-VAL-UC-GENERAL-STRING). If no value
for universal-class is present on the open confirm, universal-class 25
(ZFTM-VAL-UC-GRAPHIC-STRING) is used as the default value.
The initiator checks the length of each string against the maximum-string-length
value (except for unbounded string condition) proposed in the contents-type
parameter of the open request or returned in the open confirm, where the maximum
value is 7148 bytes. If the string length is greater than the proposed
maximum-string-length, the initiator returns an error to the application.
Note. The Guardian procedures do not return format effectors with the data read from the
Guardian file system. Depending on what the remote system expects to see as an end-of-line
symbol, your application might need to add carriage return/line feeds to the data read from the
Guardian file system before placing it in an FTM procedure.