Depending on the printer, you can control the appearance and characteristics of the final output. The printers need not be located in the same area as the system unit and the system console. A printer can be attached directly to a local system, or a print job can be sent over a network to a remote system.
To handle print jobs with maximum efficiency, the system places each job into a queue to await printer availability. The system can save output from one or more files in the queue. As the printer produces the output from one file, the system processes the next job in the queue. This process continues until each job in the queue has been printed.
AIX Version 4.3 Guide to Printers and Printing provides detailed information about printers, print jobs, and queues.