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September 22, 1993
Up to this time, the only printers within the
Computer Centre available to the general Academic
user community using the SGI system, have been
dot matrix printers in the basement. As of Monday, September 20,
1993, a line printing capability is available.
The new facility is the 6252 model AS8 printer, whose
highest rating is at 800 lines per
minute. This document describes
the forms currently available on this printer,
options available on the printer commands, and recommendations for use.
Note that the default printer has not
been changed. Unless you have set the PRINTER
variable to some other printer, the default printer remains
set to "lp", which is a dot matrix printer in the basement of the
building.
The 6252 printer provides printing capability similarly
to that provided by the 4245 printers available under
VM. Up to 132 characters per line can be printed.
One major difference is that the default printer band
has both upper and lower-case letters. Even though the
rated speed of the printer is significantly reduced, (to 460 lines
per minute), since UNIX systems are case sensitive,
there is little choice.
Even though you need to print a file
which has only upper-case letters, it is not recommended
that you specify an upper-case only band, that is, unless it
is very large --
eg. half a box or more. You may ask why a user
would want to bother to specify a form that
only has upper case characters, when obviously,
upper case characters are available on the default band.
The reason is speed. The upper-case-only band that is available
is rated at 650 lines per minute, so
it's about 50% faster than
the upper/lower-case band. So, don't request a form that
uses the upper-case-only print band, unless you need
to print large volumes of output. On the other hand,
when you do have large printing demands, using the upper-case-only
band in this case will help to keep the print
queues short, thereby expediting printing for other users.
If you print a file that has lower-case letters
on the upper-case-only
band, the letters will automatically
be translated to upper-case.
The forms that are currently
available and their characteristics are listed
below. They are identical to existing form
numbers currently in use. Additional forms will be added
as required.
Form Name Lines Per Inch Print
Band Description
---------------- -------- ----------
----------------
std
8 Upper/Lower
11x15 Half page
7120
6 Upper/Lower
11x15 Full page
7130
6 Upper/Lower
11x15 Back - Full page
7220
8 Upper/Lower
11x15 Full page
7230
8 Upper/Lower
11x15 Back - Full page
7125
6 Upper/Lower
9 1/2x11 L & R Perforated
7225
8 Upper/Lower
9 1/2x11 L & R Perforated
6379
6 Upper
11x15 Full page
6267
6 Upper
11x15 Back - Full page
8267
8 Upper
11x15 Back - Full page
Note: Special paper must be supplied by the user for forms 7125
and 7225.
It is very easy to tell the system to use the
form you want. As far as the UNIX systems are concerned,
a printer exists for each form. So,
if you want to print on a particular form, you
simply print it on that printer. For example, to print to form
7120, you specify option "-P 7120" on the line printer command.
So, on the SGI you would enter: "lpr -P 7120
/etc/motd" to print the file called "/etc/motd".
There are several options available
on the SGI's lpr command. Those which are most
useful are listed below. See the "man" pages for a more comprehensive
explanation.
Option Description
------ -----------
lpr -P used to
specify the desired printer or form
-#
used to specify the number of copies desired. These will
be printed between 1 set of separator pages.
-J
used to specify a title for the print job on the separator
page. The 1st 16 characters of the string following the
option will be printed in block letters.
-p
used to have the output processed by the pr command. This
causes a title to be printed before the file is printed.
-T
used to modify the title string when the -p option is used.
This option does not affect the separator page.
-i
used to indent the body of the file by either a default of
8 characters, or the specified amount.
-m
used to receive a notification message via mail after the
file has been printed.
A 16 block-character title will show the filename
being printed on the separator page. The user can specify
their own title by using the -J option. This can
be useful for identifying output, simply by viewing the
separator page. For example, to more readily identify the /etc/motd file,
we could use the command: "lpr -J msg.of.the.day /etc/motd". Again,
there must not be any embedded blanks in the title string.
In conclusion, here is a final example for the SGI:
lpr -J title_string -P 7120 file1 file2 file3
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