Dave Lovelace makes the 'yet another feature' list...
Sigh...
Release LPRng 3.7.1 - Sun Nov 5 11:56:40 PST 2000
lp -f formname now makes the CLASS information 'formname' as well.
(Inspired by: Dave Lovelace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
> From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Oct 27 12:26:25 2000
> From: Dave Lovelace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: LPRng: SYSV-style forms management
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 14:25:46 -0400 (EDT)
>
> I'm pretty new to this list, & to LPRng. I've got it up and working,
> basically. (I didn't have any problems to compare with the kinds of
> things most of you folks have discussed!) However, there are some
> things I don't see how to do. I've at least skimmed through the entire
> HOWTO, and searched for keywords every which way, without finding what
> I'm looking for - though I suspect that it's actually not really hard,
> it isn't the kind of issue that's come up, apparently. (All the stuff
> involving queues on multiple hosts, etc., is **way** beyond our needs
> now.)
Yeah... right...
>
> I have no background in using bsd-style printing beyond what I've found
> so far in setting stuff up, before we located LPRng. So I'm pretty
> ignorant of the background presupposed by most of the LPRng doc.
>
> Here's the situation. We are migrating stuff from a reasonably
> standard SYSV Unix system, where lp/lpsched/lpstat/lpadmin rules, to
> Linux. The standard bsd-style lpr/lpd setup lost us **way** too many
> features that are coded all over into scripts etc., and in looking
> around we found LPRng. It looks like major overkill, but I'm fairly
> sure it will do everything we need, at least with a few changes.
>
> Now, one thing we are still supporting is printing (on impact
> lineprinters, but that's another question) on continuous, pre-printed
> forms. We can create a form, give it an alignment pattern, and then
> queue up jobs with a command such as
>
> lp -d someprinter -f formname ... printfile
>
> The system holds this job, and any others queued with the -f option, in
> the queue, but lets any queued without this option go ahead and print.
> Then we mount the form. We disable the printer ("stop" it, in
> lpr/lpd-speak, I think) so that nothing at all is printing, tell the
> operator to insert the forms, and issue a command (as root):
>
> lpadmin -p someprinter -M -f formname -a
>
> (omitting the "-a" if there is not in fact an alignment pattern, but
> there normally is). This does two things:
>
> 1. It registers the form as mounted, so that when the printer
> is enabled ("start"ed), all and only jobs queued up for this
> specific form will print.
>
> 2. Because of the -a, it queues up an immediate job (implemented
> as a pipe, as it happens) which sends an alignment pattern to the
> printer, and goes into a loop prompting the operator to say whether
> another alignment pattern is needed.
>
> When all (any) desired alignment patterns have been printed, we
> re-enable ("start") the printer so that jobs with this form (and only
> they) will print, while other jobs are held in the queue. (So we may
> at this point queue up other jobs for this form, and they print, or
> other jobs for no form or for other forms, and they do NOT print yet.)
>
> Finally, we reverse the process, mounting (no alignment) the
> pseudo-form-name "none", which allows jobs queued with no "-f" option
> to print.
>
> I see from the doc that "lp -f formname" is implemented by setting
> something called the "print format" (discussed in the HOWTO (version
> I'm reading, anyway) in section 6.2) to the first character of
> formname. OK, we don't (normally) have enough forms that we can't be
> creative in nameing them, I hope. And if I need to, I **think** I can
> probably write something to manage sending the alignment patterns,
> etc. What I don't see is how to configure things to automatically hold
> all jobs for our special forms, then to tell it to print the jobs for
> one particular form but hold all others. I'm also concerned about the
> overloading of this field; these are normally text jobs, but in a few
> cases they are binary, in which case the format type would have to be
> "b" or "l", right? (Depends on the physical printer whether this is a
> factor.)
>
> Sorry this is so long & complex, but I'm totally at a loss, & trying to
> ask it in short, self-contained questions appeared to me to only be
> confusing. Any help anyone can give is MUCH appreciated!
>
> (I'll reserve other, tangentially-related questions, for other
> messages.)
>
> --
> - Dave Lovelace
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
There is a similar facility in LPRng. It uses the notions
of 'job class', or more properly, 'job characteristics'. You can
set the class of a job using:
lpr -C class
Unfortunately, the LPRng 'lp' support does not pass the 'lp -f formname'
as the class information. You can add this to the lpr.c code:
in common/lpr.c, around line 332 you have:
case 'D': Parse_debug(Optarg,1);
break;
case 'f': Format_JOB = *Optarg;
break;
case 'H': /* special handling - ignore */
break;
Modify this to be:
case 'D': Parse_debug(Optarg,1);
break;
case 'f': Classname_JOB = Optarg;
break;
case 'H': /* special handling - ignore */
break;
(This has been done for LPRng-3.7.1)
Now you can use the 'lpc class' command to control what jobs
are printed.
Suppose that you have two forms: 'long' and 'short' (I am making
these names up).
To have only jobs submitted by 'lpr -C long' or 'lp -f long' print,
you use:
lpc class PRINTER long
To have only jobs submitted by 'lpr -C short' or 'lp -f short' print,
you use:
lpc class PRINTER short
You turn the 'class restriction' stuff off and print any job by using
lpc class PRINTER off
(Yes, yes, you cannot have a class with the name 'off'. Tough.)
Now how to print your alignment job:
lpr -C align file.with.alingment stuff
lpc class PRINTER align
lpc start PRINTER <<< this may be optional
and when you get the alignment done:
lpc class PRINTER long (or short).
Patrick Powell Astart Technologies,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 9475 Chesapeake Drive, Suite D,
Network and System San Diego, CA 92123
Consulting 858-874-6543 FAX 858-279-8424
LPRng - Print Spooler (http://www.astart.com)
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