Sending MICR Print From NT Environment
ITEM: RTA000151164
Q:
Topic thread:
Printer Systems (PRINT)
PSF/AIX
Customer has an Account Payable application that kicks out formatted
ASCII data that needs to printed with an overlay and several fonts
including the MICR font. The customer's application runs on a NT server
and the customer does not want to submit these jobs to his RISC
System/6000 for spooling or queueing because he fears that that it will
cause additional traffic on his Ethernet network. The customer would
prefer to send the jobs directly to from the NT Server to the MICR
printer. I tried convincing the customer otherwise, but he was quite
adamant about it. Is there any way that you are aware of to either
A.) show the customer the minimal impact to the network
B.) getting the formatted data to a 4317 MICR printer from an NT server?
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
A:
The answer depends on what data stream the customer will be
sending to the printer. According to the Rosetta Technologies home
page, the MICR 4317 supports both IPDS, PCL5, and PostScript. In which
mode were you planning on driving the 4317? (Although you mention
an overlay and fonts, that doesn't necessarily imply an IPDS printer or
even AFP overlays; PCL also has the capability of forms and fonts.)
If you're talking about a PCL application with PCL fonts and forms,
then you don't need PSF/AIX or InfoPrint Manager; you should be able
to drive a PCL 4317 directly from NT. Likewise with PostScript.
You mentioned that his application "kicks out formatted ASCII".
What exactly do you mean by that? ACIF can only process flat ASCII
(nothing more than line feeds, carriage returns, and form feeds).
PSF/AIX and InfoPrint can also process ASCII with Proprinter or
Quietwriter escape sequences and apply a formdef/overlay, but you can't
use a pagedef for formatting the data, and your font selections may be
limited. So I'd need clarification on what you mean by "formatted
ASCII".
If you are talking about formatting flat ASCII data with an AFP overlay
and AFP fonts (with just the line feed, carriage return and form feed I
mentioned above), then you can use ACIF and a pagedef/formdef/overlay
combination. I'm not familiar with OnDemand for NT; perhaps it could
perform that function. Otherwise, you require PSF/AIX or InfoPrint
Manager, both of which are only available on the AIX platform, not NT.
Both PSF/AIX and InfoPrint Manager could use ACIF to format the data
with AFP resources and drive the output to the 4317 either in PCL or
IPDS mode (though IPDS is a more efficient and more robust alternative).
The bottom line is that either PSF/AIX or InfoPrint Manager and an
RS/6000 are required, and the customer will have to get the data to
the RS/6000 system somehow (perhaps with NFS-mounting or with AIX
Connections, depending on their environment).
If he is concerned about his network, he could attach the RS/6000 and
4317 on a separate subnet accessible only from the NT server. That
could keep the traffic between NT and the RS/6000 and the printer off
the backbone segments. Setting up a small Ethernet segment is not
very expensive.
I hope that helps. Please reopen with any additional questions.
Thanks for using ViewBlue.
S e a r c h - k e y w o r d s:
psf/6000 psf/aix psf aix infoprint manager ipmgr pod nt micr rosetta
np17 4317 ethernet acif pagedef formdef overlay ascii pcl postscript
WWQA: ITEM: RTA000151164 ITEM: RTA000151164
Dated: 08/1998 Category: XPSF6000
This HTML file was generated 99/06/24~12:43:39
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