AIX Printer Tips: Separate Paper Drawers for Header Pages


Contents

About This Document
AIX 4 Instructions
Setting Up for Virtual Printers at AIX 3.2


About This Document

The AIX virtual printer creates and controls header pages. By default, the header page comes from the same paper tray as the main print job. Many people like to put colored paper in one tray to easily identify the start of a job. At AIX 4, menus were added to smit to allow you to easily change the paper tray for the header page as well as the main page. This document describes setting the paper tray for the header page at AIX 4.x as well as AIX 3.2.

AIX 4 Instructions

The header page attributes are controlled by the sH attribute, but at AIX 4, the paper tray attribute is selectable from SMIT as follows:

Setting the Paper Tray for the Main Paper

  1. smit chpq

  2. Choose PRINT QUEUE name

  3. Choose option 2, Default Print Job Attributes, as shown below
            Characteristic to Change/Show
    
        Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.
    
          1 Printer Setup
          2 Default Print Job Attributes  
          3 Accounting File
          4 Queuing Discipline
    
  4. Scroll down to Paper/Page Options
      ------------- Paper/Page Options --------------
      Page ORIENTATION                                    portrait
      Input PAPER SOURCE                                  tray 1 (upper)
      PAPER SIZE override for input paper source          letter 
      DUPLEX output                                       simplex
      
      --------- Header/Trailer Page Options ---------
      SEPARATOR PAGES                                     none  
    
  5. Hit F4 or select from Input PAPER SOURCE and select paper tray for the main job. Options include (depending on printer type):

  6. Hit Enter to make the changes

  7. Move cursor down to SEPARATOR PAGES and select from:

  8. Hit Enter or Do to return to UNIX prompt.

Setting the Paper Tray for Headers

The tray setting for the header paper tray is set by putting a -u flag into the sH attribute for laser printers. This is done for you through SMIT at AIX 4 as follows:

  1. smitty chpq

  2. Select Option 1 Printer Setup

  3. Move cursor to the line showing
    Input PAPER TRAY for header page

  4. Hit F4 or select button to choose paper tray

  5. Move selection to desired tray and hit Enter or Do

  6. Hit Enter again to change the printer settings

Setting Up for Virtual Printers at AIX 3.2

The following describes the steps to take to have the burst page come from a separate paper tray. Although this was written for and tested on the IBM4039, the ideas should transfer to other virtual printers. For the header flags, change to either sh or sH.

On the IBM4039, the biggest tray is the lower tray. Therefore, it is suggested to fill this tray with white paper for production work. A colored paper should be inserted into the upper tray. Next, make the following changes to the virtual printers.

ASCII and PCL Queues

lsvirprt
Select virtual printer
u=2
(tray 1 is the upper tray; tray 2 is the lower tray; tray 3 is the envelope feeder)
sH=-u1
(header pages will now come from the upper tray)

PS Queue

For the PS queue, messages in some of the older virtual printers can be inaccurate. The lower tray is 1 but the upper tray is 0. Following is a list of trays and their locations according to the technical reference manual for IBM Lexmark PS printers.

Trays for LexMark & IBM Laser Printers

Next, make the following settings:

lsvirprt
Select the virtual printer
u=1
(set the main tray to the lower and larger tray)
sh~v
(sh tilde v gives vi session to edit sh)
Add a line to the end of the definition of ' -u0'. This time the single quotes must be included.
Pipeline for Header Page
sh = %Ide/pioburst %F[H] %Idb/H4039.ps | %Ide/pioformat -@%Idd/%Imm -!%Idf/piofp
t %f[j]

 %Ide          INCLUDE: (Directory Containing Miscellaneous Modules)
 '/pioburst '
 %F[H]         If "-H] Argument" on Command Line, "-# Argument" -> OUTPUT
 ' '
 %Idb          INCLUDE: (Directory Containing Header and Trailer Text Files)
 '/H.ps | '
 %Ide          INCLUDE: (Directory Containing Miscellaneous Modules)
 '/pioformat -@'
 %Idd          INCLUDE: (Directory Containing Digested Data Base Files)
 '/'
 %Imm          INCLUDE: (File Name Of (Digested) Data Base; Init. By
               "piodigest" (mt.md.mn.mq:mv))
 ' -!'
 %Idf          INCLUDE: (Directory Containing Loadable Formatter Routines)
 '/piofpt '
 %f[j]         For Each Flag x on Command Line: "-xArgument" -> OUTPUT
 ' -u0' THIS IS WHERE TO ADD LINE
~
This is how the resulting list of the virtual printer appears:
Name    Description                                   Value
sh      Pipeline for Header Page                     %Ide/pioburst %F[H
                                                     ] %Idb/H.ps | %Ide
                                                     /pioformat -@%Idd/
                                                     %Imm -! %Idf/piofp
                                                     t %f[j] -u0       


Separate Paper Drawers for Header Pages: AIX Printer Tips: diffhead.html ITEM: FAX
Dated: 99/04/19~00:00 Category: zap
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