My original question, in summary, was how to direct a print jobs to a
specific paper tray on the destination printer (a DECLaser 3500 in this
case). There are options listed for doing this in lpr, but they do not
work.
First, several people pointed out that certain lpr commands (-Itray,
-Oorientation) simply do not work for jobs across the network. Several
people recommended using the 'lpspr' command found in the PrintServer
Software (LPSBASE), which I found on the Software Product Library CD (1 of
4). However, the using 'lpspr -Itop', the job simply got lost at the
printer because lpspr was sending the job to tray #1, which is nonexistent.
A little trial and error showed that the top tray was accessed through the
#0 (obviously printer dependent!), but for which there was no option in
lpspr. Looking at the output from lpspr, the relevant line that is needs to
be added to the beginning of a PostScript file is:
statusdict begin 0 setpapertray end
To print any PostScript file to the top tray, simply cat the following two
lines to the front of the PS file and pipe it to lpr:
%!PS-Adobe-1.0
statusdict begin 0 setpapertray end
When printing a text file, this command can be included automatically using
GNU enscript (ASCII to PostScript converter) with the following command (or
set in $HOME/.enscriptrc):
enscript -Ssetpapertray:0 filename.txt
Sorry for the delay in the summary and thanks to all who gave me pointers.
Now I put paper that has already been printed on one side in the top tray
and regular paper in the bottom tray. Depending on what I'm printing, I can
choose the type of paper on which to print it and maybe save a tree or two.
GNU Enscript can be found at
http://www.hut.fi/~mtr/genscript/index.html
Thanks,
kevin reardon
Respondents were:
Hellebo Knut <Knut.Hellebo_at_nho.hydro.com>
Thierry DOCHY <dochy_at_dr.sncf.fr>
Lucien_HERCAUD_at_paribas.com (Lucien HERCAUD)
David Pesticcio <davidp_at_cableol.net>
"Juergen Bock" <bock_at_dbf.ddb.de>
Gerhard Nolte <gnolte_at_gwdg.de>
Original question in full:
> I am having a problem sending print jobs to different paper trays using
> lpr. I have a DECLaser 3500 with Network Interface Card and two paper trays
> (plus the manual/multipurpose feeder) running on our local network. I'm
> trying to print from an AlphaServer 1000 runing DU 3.2. In lpr, there is
> the option to specify which paper tray to use with the -I option (e.g. lpr
> -Iupper). However, no matter how I set up the printer, host resident, NIC
> resident, the output always comes out of the default paper cassette. In the
> spooled job, I get the right command in the /var/spool/printer/cf* file,
> namely, a line "<upper". But the word isn't getting to the printer somehow.
> I can select different paper trays from my Macintosh and it works fine, so
> I know the capability is alive and well. Any ideas?
Received on Mon Oct 28 1996 - 17:43:41 NZDT