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SmartLabel Printing via
the Print-Spooler
* Doing it Properly
* Serial Ports under UNIX
* The SVR4 Spooler (lp and lpsched)
Solaris 2, Solaris 7, Solaris 8
SunSoft Print Server (optional replacement for lpsched on
Solaris 2.4, 2.5, 2.5.1)
HP-UX 10.x and later
SCO OpenServer
DYNIX/ptx 2.x and later
ESIX 4.x
* The SVR3 Spooler (lp and lpsched)
Irix 5.x & 6.x
SCO UNIX 3.2
HP-UX upto 8.x
DYNIX/ptx 1.x
* The BSD Spooler (lpr and lpd)
Linux
NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, UNIX BSD 4.x
SunOS 3.x, SunOS 4.x
DYNIX 3.x
OSF1
Sony NeWS-OS 4.x
many others
* The LPRng Spooler (aka PLP)
used at many sites in place of the native UNIX print spooler
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Doing it Properly
Rather than keep it to themselves, many people will want to deploy their
Smart Label Printer as a shared resource, via their specific UNIX
print-spooler software. This allows label printing using "normal" print
commands, rather than invoking slap directly. The UNIX print-spooler also
enables the printer to be shared across a network.
Configuring the UNIX print-spooler for a Smart Label Printer is quite easy
to do (sample scripts are provided with the distribution). The examples
below are all designed to provide the following behaviour:
* print-jobs can be submitted with the spooler's normal commands, such as
lp or lpr. Users will not be forced to use yet another printer-specific
program.
* printer and print-queue status can be queried with the spooler's
standard "status" commands, such as lpstat or lpq, on those platforms
where such is possible. Users will not be forced to use yet another
printer-specific program (Hewlett-Packard, can you hear me?).
* if the printer runs out of labels half-way through a job, the job will
wait until new labels are loaded. Whilst waiting for more labels, the
print-queue status will (where possible) indicate "printer empty: load
labels". As soon as more labels are loaded, the job will continue and
the print-queue status will become "ready and printing". The print-job
will not be reprinted unnecessarily.
* fatal printing errors (cable pulled out, label jammed in printer,
broken printer, command-line errors, garbled communications, printer
switched off half way through a job) are handled gracefully: the next
print-job is not adversely affected, and the fault is reported. Where
possible, a failed print-job will be retried a short while later.
* except where disallowed by local administrative policies, users can
select whether an individual print job is accompanied by a one-label
banner page or not. All local administrative policies can be applied by
the standard spooler mechanisms.
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Serial Ports under UNIX
Some UNIX systems have distinct serial-port device-files for incoming
(login) use and for outgoing (call-up) use. When using a Smart Label Printer
on such systems, you should specify the "call-up" device-file rather than
the "login" one. For instance:
Solaris 2.x: /dev/cua/a /dev/cua/b /dev/cua/0 etc
Linux (kernel < 2.2): /dev/cua0 /dev/cua1 etc
Linux (kernel >= 2.2): /dev/ttyS0 /dev/ttyS1 etc
DYNIX/ptx 2.0: /dev/cua/0 /dev/cua/1 etc
SunOS 4.1.3: /dev/cua0 /dev/cua1 etc
IRIX 5.3: /dev/ttym1 /dev/ttym2 etc
When configuring the print-spooler, there is no need to specify the
serial-port baud-rate or other stty/termios settings. slap always hunts for
the printers' current baud rate (and switches the printer to its' fastest
workable baud rate); and always explicitly sets the stty/termios modes
needed to communicate with the printer.
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System V Release 4 (lpsched and lp)
NOTE: this also applies to the "SunSoft Print Server" package that
optionally replaces the SVR4 software for Solaris 2.4, 2.5 and 2.5.1, and
comes as standard with Solaris 2.6.
1. create a new "printer-interface" script from the template
A template SVR4 "printer-interface" script is installed with the rest
of the software, as install-dir/lib/slapf.svr4.
Edit this script, and change the label-size, thus:
MEDIA=label-type
The available label-types are listed in the manpage.
You may also need to change the setting of BAUDMAP: see the comments in
the script.
Save your changes in another file, such as
install_dir/lib/queue-name.pi.
2. create the print-queue
lpadmin -p queue-name -I simple -T vanilla \
-i install-dir/lib/queue-name.pi \
-o nobanner -v port
where port is the name of the serial-port device to which the printer
is attached, install-dir is the directory where slap was installed, and
queue-name is the name of the printer.
NOTE: you do not need to specify the "-o stty=..." option.
There are esoteric facilities (custom alerts, printer-classes, etc)
that can be specified with other options - see your system
documentation, or the manpage for lpadmin.
By default, the provided printer-interface program prints a one-label banner
page for each print-job, unless the "-onobanner" flag is given on the lp
command-line. This default can be changed by editing slapf.svr4: change
"printbanner=yes" to be "printbanner=no".
When submitting print-jobs with lp, you can specify the font to use on the
command line, eg:
lp -d sl1 -o font=thames-bold-italic-24 file1.txt
The available fonts are listed in the manpage.
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System V Release 3 (lpsched and lp)
1. create a new "printer-interface" script from the template
A template SVR3 "printer-interface" script is installed with the rest
of the software, as install-dir/lib/slapf.svr3.
Edit this script, and change the label-size, thus:
MEDIA=label-type
The available label-types are listed in the manpage.
You may also need to change the setting of BAUDMAP: see the comments in
the script.
Save your changes in another file, such as
install_dir/lib/queue-name.pi.
2. create the print-queue
lpadmin -p queue-name \
-i install-dir/lib/queue-name.pi \
-v port
where port is the name of the serial-port device to which the printer
is attached, install-dir is the directory where slap was installed, and
queue-name is the name of the printer.
By default, the provided printer-interface program prints a one-label banner
page for each print-job, unless the "-onobanner" flag is given on the lp
command-line. This default can be changed by editing slapf.svr3: change
"printbanner=yes" to be "printbanner=no".
When submitting print-jobs with lp, you can specify the font to use on the
command line, eg:
lp -d sl1 -o font=thames-bold-italic-24 file1.txt
The available fonts are listed in the manpage.
Note that the "out-of-labels" printer-status will be reported to the user by
mail, rather than being made visible in the output of lpstat. The latter
seems to be impossible under the SVR3 spooler.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
BSD (lpr and lpd)
1. create a new "input-filter" script from the template
A template shell-script filter is provided as
install-dir/lib/slapf.bsd.
Edit this script, and change the font selection and label-size, thus:
FONT=font-name
...
MEDIA=label-type
The available font-names and label-types are listed in the manpage.
You may also need to change the setting of BAUDMAP: see the comments in
the script.
Save your changes in another file, such as
install_dir/lib/queue-name.if.
2. create the print-queue
Add the following entry to /etc/printcap:
queue-name:\
:lp=port:rw:\
:if=install-dir/lib/queue-name.if:\
:sf:sb:sh:sd=spool-directory:
where port is the name of the serial-port device to which the printer
is attached, install-dir is the directory where slap was installed, and
queue-name is the name of the printer. Spool-directory is as described
in your local lpd manpage.
NOTE: you should not need to specify any of the :br:fc:fs:xc:xs:
options in the printcap entry.
Unlike System V UNIX, the standard BSD print commands do not allow you to
specify arbitrary per-job print-options, such as selecting the typeface or
font size.
A common "fix" for this shortcoming is to define several logical printers
all pointing to the same physical device, but each defined with a different
input filter.
There are several other "fixes" for this LPD design flaw, including using
another print-spooler altogether (such as LPRng). See the newsgroups,
mailing-lists, et al.
Depending on your version of "lpd", printer errors such as "not responding",
"out of labels" or "label jammed" may be reported to the console, to the
user's terminal or even via "syslog". You can direct these messages to a
specific named file or device by adding an :lf=path: element to the printcap
entry for the printer.
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LPRng
The above "BSD" method works with older releases of LPRng, too.
Newer releases of LPRng require some additional steps (thanks to Gregory
Borzecki for these instructions):
* Change /etc/lpr.config to allow network connections from the
print-server to itself (!): uncomment the entry for <@localhost>.
* Change the ownership of the input filter to user daemon, group daemon,
and change the permissions to 0600.
LPRng has many more capabilities, thus a more specific method for
integrating slap with LPRng would be worth doing.
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