6400-014 attached to PSF for AIX
ITEM: RTA000150886
Q:
Topic thread:
Printer Systems (PRINT)
PSF/AIX
PRINT XPSF6000
Hello,
My customer wants to attach a 6400 printer (he needs 100.000 14" special
forms a month) to a RS/6000 with AIX 4.3 and PSF for AIX. I think we
need the i-data 7913 to attach it to the token ring.
Now the customer wants to print an ascii datastream with cc and trc
codes to change the fonts with a line2afp transform and necessary
formdef and pagedef. After searching WWQA I am not sure if this is
possible.
I understand that InfoPrint mgr has 6400 IPDS support, however I could
not find any solution for PSF for AIX.
If the 6400 solution is not the solution, is there an other impact
that could be attached to PSF for AIX or AIX itself
to get the print data with different fonts?
A:
The only support in PSF/AIX for any impact printers is through PSF
Direct from an MVS, VM, VSE, or OS/400 system using SNA LU6.2 to 6400
IPDS printers. No other IPDS impact printers are supported through PSF
Direct.
Outside of PSF Direct, there is no support for any impact printers
through PSF/AIX, IPDS or otherwise. There are ASCII models of the
6400 printers that are supported by AIX, but of course you wouldn't
have formdef/pagedef support. However, if they can create their
application to exploit the capabilities of an ASCII 6400, then they
should be able to drive it through AIX.
If you need additional information on the capabilities of an ASCII
6400 and its various emulations (Epson FX, Printronix P-series, and
IBM Proprinter III XL emulation), please reopen this item. You may
also wish to check the following IBM internal web site,
http://tesch.aix.dfw.ibm.com/printips, for additional information
on AIX support of the 6400.
Please reopen if you have additional questions.
Q:
Hello,
Customer is convinced that they need InfoPrint manager for support
of the IPDS 6400-014 printer.
Is it possible to 'submit' an unformatted ASCII datastream with
carriage control characters AND TRC's to be formatted with a pagedef
(means ACIF) and use OCR-B and normal gothic 10, 12 or 15 pitch and
a condensed font and send that to the 6400-014 attached via coax? and
Idata box 7913 and TR to the RS/6000 with InfoPrint Manager
A:
The following response has been reviewed by the developer of the IPDS
64xx support in InfoPrint Manager and the product engineer for the 6400.
Yes, you can format an ASCII data stream with CCs and TRCs with a
pagedef through ACIF and send the output to an IPDS 6400 connected
coaxially to an i-data 7913 on an Ethernet or Token-Ring LAN. As I
mentioned earlier, you cannot download fonts to a 64xx, so you are
restricted to the fonts and code pages that are resident in the printer.
However, it is important to note that not all resident fonts and code
pages are available in all 6400 print quality modes. You must review
Tables 11 and 12 in the 6400 IPDS Programmer's Reference (S246-0148) to
determine which code pages (CPGIDs) and fonts (FGIDs) are available in
which print quality modes of the 6400, and then configure the 6400's
print quality to support the fonts you wish to use. Or, alternatively,
first decide on the 6400 print quality, then select from the list of
resident fonts and codepages available for that quality.
The fonts that you listed (OCR-B, Gothic 10, Gothic 12, and Gothic 15)
are all available on the 6400 as resident fonts.
- According to Table 12, the Gothic fonts you mention are available in
either Draft or DP mode, but not in NLQ mode.
- As for OCR, according to the 6400 product engineer, OCR has its own
special print quality implicitly handled within the printer; that
is, you don't have to set any particular print quality at the 6400
in order to use OCR. You can thus select the 6400's print quality
based on the availability of the other fonts you wish to use and
still be able to use OCR fonts without errors or performance
slowdowns.
- You also mentioned a condensed font, but not a specific one by name,
so you'd need to verify that such a font is resident and that it is
available for the print quality mode you wish.
If the customer is referring to the 4234 compressed fonts (these
were vertically compressed fonts), these fonts are NOT available in
shipping 6400 code but are available in a development code level. If
the customer needs these fonts (assuming we're both talking about th
same fonts), you will need to get special code from development
for their 6400s. This code will eventually be released into
production; it just isn't generally available now.
You should then perform the same analysis for your required code pages
using Table 11.
The resident fonts in the 6400 are activated by CPGID and FGID according
to internal GRID mapping tables in InfoPrint Manager. We also provide
sample copies of those GRID tables for the 64xx printers that may be
customized to override the internal InfoPrint default mappings. These
sample files are in /usr/lpp/psf/grd as charset.64xx.grd and
codepage.64xx.grd.
For example, if you look at charset.64xx.grd, you would see an entry
like:
C0D0GT10 26 - - - - # GOTHIC TEXT 10
"C0D0GT10" is the character set name that would be referenced in the
AFPDS; the "26" in column 2 tells InfoPrint Manager to generate IPDS
which will load the resident font with FGID 26 (X'1A'). In Table 12
in the 6400 IPDS Programmer's Reference, you'll see that FGID X'001A'
equates to the resident Gothic 10 CPI normal font that's available in
either Draft or DP mode. So the AFPDS call for C0D0GT10 would in this
case get converted to an IPDS call for the resident Gothic 10 CPI font.
If you don't like the default mappings IBM provides, or if you want to
ensure that you don't request a font that's not available in the print
quality mode your printer is set to, you can copy and edit this file.
For example, you could modify this to change the mappings, or you could
edit it in such a way as to disable the use of certain resident fonts.
Additional information on the GRID mapping files can be found in
"InfoPrint Manager: Using IBM InfoPrint Control for Production Printing"
(S544-5473) in Appendix G. One important piece of information that I
don't see in there is what to do if you modify the charset.64xx.grd
or codepage.64xx.grd sample files.
1) Of course, it's always good practice to make a copy of the original
files before making any changes.
2) Modify the file(s) as necessary to reflect the desired mappings.
3) The modified files should have minimum permissions of 444, owner
of root, and group of printq. They can be either left in the
/usr/lpp/psf/grd subdirectory or the /var/psf/
subdirectory with differing effects:
- If the modified "charset.64xx.grd" and/or "codepage.64xx.grd" file
is installed in the subdirectory /var/psf/ (where
"" is the name of the InfoPrint physical printer object),
only that one 64xx is affected by that copy of the file.
- If the modified "charset.64xx.grd" and/or "codepage.64xx.grd"file
is installed in the /usr/lpp/psf/grd subdirectory, *all* IPDS 64xx
printers will use the mappings in this file. Non-64xx printers
will not be affected.
4) You will need to shutdown and restart the InfoPrint physical printer
object(s) so that the new GRID tables are processed.
If you're considering using overlays or page segments in this job, then
please reopen this item as we'll need to discuss further.
I hope this helps. Thanks again for your patience.
Q:
Thanks very much for your extensive response.
One minor detail about the condensed font, customer wants to have
a gothic font with a small pitch (a lot of chars on a line) so not
the vertical thing, is such a font resident?.
A:
Table 12 in the IPDS Reference I referred to earlier lists (among
others) Gothic 15 (Draft, DP), Gothic 16.7 (Draft, DP, NLQ), Gothic 18
(Draft, DP, NLQ). The Gothic 15 and 18 are already mapped in the
charset.64xx.grd to GT15 and GT18, respectively; the Gothic 16.7 is
not currently mapped to a font in that charset.64xx.grd, but it has a
a line where you can equate it to the character set of your choice.
I also found some additional information that I should have included
in my previous response, and that is the ability to change 6400 print
quality from within the formdef using the QUALITY subparameter on the
copygroup. This means you could dynamically change 6400 print quality
through the data stream. Of course you can still set the quality from
the 6400 operator panel if you prefer, but the ability to override that
in the formdef gives you additional flexibility.
The 6400 supports OCR-B in two font densities, and the decision on
which density to select really depends on which your OCR reader can
process better.The choices are 120x144 (default) or 180x144; the higher
the resolution you select, the slower the print speed. Note that the
OCR-B font density can only be set from the 6400 operator panel, and can
not be controlled from the data stream.
Thanks for using WWQ&A. Let me know if you have additional questions.
S e a r c h - k e y w o r d s:
psf/aix psf/6000 psf aix pod infoprint manager ipmgr 6400 6404 6408 6412
64xx impact ipds resident font fonts ocrb ocr-b ocr quality grid grd
charset code page codepage
WWQA: ITEM: RTA000150886 ITEM: RTA000150886
Dated: 07/1998 Category: XPSF6000
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