Re: Simple Printing Question -- MIDRANGE-L

Hi Konrad,

I wish that HPT offered an option to scale to fit the printable area, as part of its AFP to PCL transform, but so far it doesn't. The other thing to realize is that you need to convince HPT that the virtual page it is rendering before sending the PCL codes to the printer can actually accept all of the characters you want to print. HPT has a limitation of not supporting more than 80 characters per line when printing on Letter sized paper in portrait orientation with a 10 CPI font. I have therefore placed the link to an IBM Knowledgebase article covering how to work around this limitation and print edge to edge below for your reference.

Further information about reducing the no print border and printing edge to edge with Lexmark engine based printers can be found here:
http://www-912.ibm.com/s_dir/slkbase.NSF/acf2ee1e9d64b16e8625680b00020389/8e05e4e177326b158625728a00632adb?OpenDocument

Best Regards,

/Paul
-- Paul Tykodi
Principal Consultant
TCS - Tykodi Consulting Services LLC

Tel/Fax: 603-343-1820
Mobile: 603-866-0712
E-mail: ptykodi@xxxxxxxxx
WWW: http://www.tykodi.com

date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:15:40 -0500
from: "Konrad Underkofler"
subject: Re: Simple Printing Question

Paul,

Thanks for the assistance. I have already tried a bit of your solution. Using
the WSCST info database from IBM I have removed the right margin and moved the
whole image 1/6 of an inch to the left, more than the width of the missing
character.

Sad to say it still does not print even though the printer itself can print in
that area. It does look better aligned on the page.

When I use BCDs Spool File Explorer and capture the file as a tiff and say print
to fit a page it does print. Is there anyway to get HPT to do this?

I have also tried a variety of models on the printer and changed to the
LEXOPTRAT at the suggestion of the online help to get rid of the COR tags.

The printer by the way is a Dell rebrand of a Lexmark laser. However the
behavior is consistent across all lasers we have. It also has an overlay but
with the overlay the results are the same.

Thanks again,

Konrad

"Paul Tykodi" wrote in message
news:<875502.94006.qm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>...
Hi Konrad,

In general most HP LaserJet printers have an unprintable margin along all four
sides of cut sheet forms. It is usually a value between 0.10 and 0.20 inches on
most reasonably new HP LaserJet printers when printing with PCL. The
manufacturer type and model choices for HP LaserJet printers will have an
unprintable margin value included in the Workstation Customization Object. It is
definitely possible to make your own WSCST and zero out the unprintable margin
values so that any truncation will be the result of the printer executing the
function and not host print transform.

If you are printing on Letter sized paper at 10 characters per inch, position 84
is too close to the edge of the paper to be printed. In order to print the minus
characters, you would most likely need to perform two specific steps in creating
a customized WSCST.

1. Zero out the unprintable margin values to create an edge to edge supporting
WSCST.

2. Add a new font entry in the WSCST you are creating, which maintains the
height and typeface of the current 10 CPI font being selected but is actually
spaced at 11 CPI.

You would then direct your application to call for the new font definition you
added (by FGID) as necessary.

Because your are using *AFPDS, the WSCST font definition process is a little
more involved. If you were printing *SCS, you could just change the HMI setting
and your problem would be resolved. With *AFPDS there is a lot of individual
character positioning included in the resulting PCL so I believe you need to add
a comprehensive table describing the character metrics of the new 11 CPI font
you are defining within the WSCST you are building.

Feel free to contact me off list if you have further questions about creating
WSCST's to meet your application requirements.

Best Regards,

/Paul
--Paul Tykodi
Principal Consultant
TCS - Tykodi Consulting Services LLC

Tel/Fax: 603-343-1820
Mobile: 603-866-0712
E-mail: ptykodi-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
WWW: http://www.tykodi.com

date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:44:23 -0500
from: "news.midrange.com"
subject: Simple Printing Question

Somewhere lost in the layers of host print transform and its interaction
with our iSeries is some strange behavior.

We have a print file defined in dds as 85 wide type *AFPDS that has two -
(minus) characters on two separate lines in column 84.

When printed to a variety of printers mostly laser jet emulations it prints
fine except for dropping the -. With and overlay or without an overlay it
looks the same.

I have changed the width from 80 to 100 both on the printer file and in an
override and it looks altered on the iSeries but prints exactly the same on
the printer. Somehow has HPT seen the lack of data and dropped the - from
the last position? What is real strange is truncating the line through a
printer override still prints the report with the data but minus the minus.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Konrad