rlp formatting

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From: Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us>
Subject: Re: Info about rlp
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 23:52:42 -0800
References: <slrn9bh8es.ig0.paulj@slave.jollyp.demon.co.uk> 

On 21 Mar 2001 12:43:08 GMT, paulj@slave.jollyp.demon.co.uk (Paul
Jolliffe) wrote:

>I have used SCO for many years now and have not needed to use rlp, but
>our software has changed and ideally needs to print to rlp based printers.
>(JSB multiview controlled PC printers).  The problem that I have is that
>out application has no concept as to what a printer is, it puts out as many
>lines as it wants per page (56-72) and then throws a formfeed.  It
>does not use fixed page lengths as our customers have a variety of 
>stationary that they want to print on.
>
>I have rlp configured and working, but I need for it to control page
>formatting info such and page orientation and pitch, is this possible.

Sigh.  It is NOT the job of the print spooler to do your formatting.
It's the job of your application or perhaps some filters, but not the
spooler.  lpr/lpd include the absolute minimum of format control needed
to deal with very simple printers.  Anything more complex, such as page
control, is not in the print spoolers capabilities.

If your unspecified application, has no concept of what your unspecified
printer happens to be, my guess is that it's assuming that you have an
ancient dot-matrix or "teletype" type printer and doing its heroic best
to format the page for its illusion of page size.  The apparent random
range of lines per page (56-72) implies that your unspecified printer is
adding a line feed when the line extends past some unspecified number of
characters per line, and therefore affecting the line count.  Eventually,
it runs off the bottom of the page.

Methinks the best approach is to disarm the "auto line feed" feature of
your printer and let it run off the right side of the page.  That should
fix the lines per page.  If your unspecified printer is a laser printer,
adjust the lines per page, LPI, etc so that it agrees with your
unspecified application.  My guess would be either 60 or 66 lines per
page.  Once that's working, then deal with the character spacing and
margin sizes so that everything fits on the page.

Again, post mortem print formatting isn't going to solve this one.  It
needs to be fixed in the application and possibly the printer settings.

-- 
Jeff Liebermann   jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D  Santa Cruz CA  95060
831-421-6491 pager   831-429-1240 fax
http://www.cruzio.com/~jeffl/sco/   SCO stuff

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