Dana, That's probably because, being IP, it is usually discussed on TCPIP-L. However, back to your question.
It comes as part of the base so costs nothing and does what it says on the tin. It has a JES component that takes batch output off the spool (via FSS) and writes it to datasets. It has a VTAM component that emulates LU1 or LU3 SNA printers and writes that output to temporary datasets. It has a QUEUE component that takes the temporary datasets and calls LPR to send them via TCP to remote IP printers. You control via an ISPF interface how each printer is defined (name, destination, translate-table, retry limit, etc). These definitions are stored on VSAM datasets which can be accessed by multiple systems for backup purposes (but not at the same time). There is an ISPF menu for controlling (deleting, requeueing, etc) the print entries in the queue (in effect the datasets). I have used it for many, many years and it is now very reliable. It is still supported by IBM for problems (they wrote a fix for my PMR last year) but it will not get any new functionality added. It does nothing fancy with the data other than pass it to LPR so you are limited by what that can do. If you want to do data transforms then you will need to get Infoprint which costs money. The two products are quite similar in many respects. Regards, Alan. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:ibm-m...@bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Dana Mitchell Sent: 09 October 2009 15:27 To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu Subject: Experience with NPF I am researching IP print solutions, to replace some quite old impact line printers, and I recently stumbled upon the manual for NPF while working on our z/OS 1.11 install. I don't recall ever reading or hearing about this before. At first glance it appears to be a way to drive LPD printers without many bells & whistles, to do standard JES to IP printing. Am I missing some obvious warts here? There doesn't seem to be much discussion on IBM-Main about it, although it seems to have been around for quite some time. If anyone could share info on NPF with me I would greatly appreciate it. thanks Dana ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
