Guide to Printers and Printing

Printing ASCII Files on a PostScript Printer

The Text Formatting System includes the enscript filter for converting ASCII print files to PostScript for printing on a PostScript printer. This filter is called by the qprt -da command when submitting a print job to a PostScript print queue.

Prerequisites

The printer must be physically attached to your system.
The printer must be configured and defined.
The transcript portion of Text Formatting Services must be installed.

Several flags may be specified with the qprt command to customize the output when submitting ASCII files to a PostScript print queue.

-1+	Adds page headings.
-2+	Formats the output in two columns.
-3+	Prints the page headings, dates, and page numbers in a fancy style. This is sometimes referred to as "gaudy" mode.
-4+	Prints the file, even if it contains unprintable characters.
-5+	Lists characters that are not included in a font.
-h string	Specifies a string to be used for page headings. If this flag is not specified, the heading consists of the file name, modification date, and page number.
-l value	Specifies the maximum number of lines printed per page. Depending on the point size, fewer lines per page may actually appear.
-L!	Truncates lines longer than the page width.
-p	Specifies the point size. If this flag is not specified, a point size of 10 is assumed, unless two-column rotated mode (-2+ -z1) is specified, in which case a value of 7 is used.
-s	Specifies the font style. If this flag is not specified, the Courier font is used. The PostScript printer must have access to the specified font. Acceptable values are: Courier-Oblique Helvetica Helvetica-Oblique Helvetica-Narrow Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique NewCenturySchlbk-Italic Optima Optima-Oblique Palatino-Roman Palatino-Italic Times-Roman Times-Italic
-z1	Rotates the output 90 degrees (landscape mode).

The following is a list of examples of how these qrptcommand flags can be used:

To send the ACSII file myfile.ascii to the PostScript printer named Msps1, enter:
```
qprt -da -PMsps1 myfile.ascii
```
For example, to send the ACSII file myfile.ascii to the PostScript printer named Msps1 and print out in the Helvetica font, enter:
```
qprt -da -PMsps1 -sHelvetica myfile.ascii
```
To send the ASCII file myfile.ascii to the PostScript printer named Msps1 and print out in the point size 9, enter:
```
qprt -da -PMsps1 -p9 myfile.ascii
```