Re: Fw: TCP/IP printing

Scott -

Thanks! This is very helpful. As usual, you give a very concise and easy to understand explanation.

Regards,
Steve

----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Klement" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 5:53 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: TCP/IP printing

Hi Steve,

One requirement of creating remote output queues that I don't
understand fully (yet) is the "Remote printer queue" (RMTPRTQ) name
that must be specified.

Remote output queues act as a "Line Printer Requester" (LPR). The LPR
protocol wasn't originally designed as a means of talking directly to
the printer, but rather for communicating between one Unix server and
another.

If you had one Unix server that had a printer attached, it would run the
"line printer daemon" (LPD). You'd use the "line printer requester"
(LPR) to send a document to the LPD computer, and then it would print it
to the printer (using a serial or parallel port, etc).

Since it's possible to have many different printers attached to one
computer, the LPR/LPD protocol exchange included a "printer port"
parameter that told it which printer to print to. This is also
sometimes called "printer queue" because each printer would typically
have it's own queue for spooled files. Very much like the output
queues we have on i5/OS.

So basically what you're doing is telling it to transfer a spooled file
from one computer to another, and telling it which output queue to use
on the destination server. Make sense?

More recently (actually, not THAT recently, but more recently than the
invention of LPR/LPD) we have printers that can have their own LPD
built-in. Printer manufacturers added this capability to their network
print servers so that people can go directly to the printers without
needing a computer in the middle... that makes good sense.

However, the correct "port" or "print queue" makes less sense in that
situation since you already know what printer you're sending it to...
Some manufacturers just ignore the queue name entirely. Others will
use it as an indication of how the file will be interpreted... For
example, HP generatlly uses the name "raw" for documents that are
already in the printer's language (such as PCL or PostScript), and need
no conversion, vs. "text" for stuff that's in plain text (Unix text
files don't have carriage returns, and HP uses this to indicate that it
should add a CR before each LF). There's also an "auto" which means
that the printer will try to detect the format automatically. External
JetDirect cards also have "raw2, text2, auto2" etc since they can have
multiple ports.

If you give a different name besides "raw", "text" or "auto", HP
printers assume you meant "raw", and use that.

"PR1" means "printer 1". It's an old convention for the first printer
port on a computer... but I haven't seen that used on an HP machine
before. Maybe you have a 3rd-party print server that's receiving the
network document, and sending it to it's first printer port? If not,
then it's just being treated as "raw".

When I browse to the web interface for any of these printers on the
LAN, I don't see the queue name PR1 defined under the LPD queue names
on the printer itself. Is this where I should be looking?

I'm not sure how you find this on the web interface (or if you can?)
I'm looking at the web interface for one of my printers, and it doesn't
say anything about the port/queue names that I can find.

So my real question is this - If I were setting up a remote outq
description for an HP 4350 laser printer from scratch, how would I
know that I should use PR1 as the remote printer queue name? Is this
information typically documented in the printer manual?

It would be in the manual for the "print server" or "network interface".
Not for the printer itself. For HP, that usually means an EIO card
called a "JetDirect" card, or an external unit that plugs into the
printer's parallel or USB port. But... it's in that manual, not the
manual for the printer itself.

Or... search the web... I found this on HP's site:
http://tinyurl.com/2lpd8d

and this on IBM's site:
http://tinyurl.com/35zpvw
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