Printing

· Printing Commands
· Print Queue
· Canceling print jobs
· Color printer

1. Printing commands: lp vs enscript and 2up and 2upframe

The basic print-related commands on our Unix systems are
  • lp (printing PostScript file only)
  • enscript (printing a text file)
  • 2up, 2upframe (printing a text file)

  • lpstat -t (seeing current printing queue)
  • cancel (to canceling your current printing job)

PostScript files

You must print PostScript files with lp. PostScript files include documents with formatting or pictures. If in doubt, there are a couple of ways to tell whether a given file is in PostScript format;
      • use the Unix command ``file''   (type file filename)
      • check whether the first two bytes of the file are ``%!''

Plain ASCII files

If the the file is not PostScript, but is a text file (also known as an ascii file, or script), then print the file using enscript or 2up or 2upframe. This includes email messages, C/Fortran source code, and anything else composed with vi or emacs or an other text editor. Enscript has a lot of options, of which the most popular is
enscript -2Gr filename
which prints the text sideways in two columns, with page numbers and file name at the top. Or, you can use the command EE which walks you through the main choices (orientation, number of columns, font) and then runs enscript for you.

Also see details about 2up and 2upframe.

PDF files

Do NOT print PDF files from the command line, using any Unix command !! That is a quick way to waste a ream of paper.

Instead, view the PDF file using the Acrobat Reader ``acroread'', and from within that viewer you can print the pages you want.

2. Checking the print queue on the Newton Lab printer (richard)

The command ``lpstat -t'' shows the current print queue. Some Macs and PCs on our system send jobs directly to the printer richard rather than to the print queue; this causes problems if there are jobs in the ``official'' queue. If the printer spends more than 60 seconds on the first page of a document, it is almost certainly hung: turn the printer off, wait 5 seconds, and turn it back on.

Don't print any big jobs unless you are around to monitor its printing. If a printing job goes bad (printing gibberish, or multiple copies), turn the printer off and cancel the job from the queue. Then turn the printer on again. (See below!!)

3. Canceling print jobs on the Newton Lab printer (richard)

There's the nice, official method of canceling a print job.
Then, there's the quick & dirty emergency stop, for when the printer is out of control, or is printing gibberish (e.g., somebody's PDF file printed the wrong way), or is spending a ridiculous amount of time (over 60 seconds) on a single page, or is already starting in on a 436-page document that you don't want...

Quick/Dirty:

  • Turn the printer off immediately, by pressing the power switch in the lower left corner of richard's front face (NOT the LCD panel!).
  • With the printer off, delete the job from the print queue as per the ``normal cancel'' method, below.   (Or, if someone with sudo priveleges is around, have that person run ``bootrichard''.)
  • Turn the printer power back on. Pull all jammed paper from the various orifices of the printer. Don't leave until the printer is unjammed and happy.

Normal Cancel:

The command ``lpstat -t'' displays print jobs in the richard1 (simplex) and richard2 (duplex) queues. If you want to cancel one of your print jobs which hasn't actually started printing yet, use the command cancel. For example, if the the queue is
dirichlet>  lpstat -t
richard2-249   simpson.Colorado.EDU!smith   110343  Feb 10 15:40
richard1-102   bromwich.Colorado.EDU!brown   76906  Feb 10 15:40
richard2-250   dirichlet.Colorado.EDU!jones 298078  Feb 10 15:40
richard2-251   simpson.Colorado.EDU!smith   110343  Feb 10 15:41
then the 3rd job in the queue can be canceled (only by jones herself, from the workstation dirichlet) with the command

dirichet>   cancel richard2-250

4. Using the Color Printer

A color printer pollack is located in the ``coffee room'' ECOT 221, the room adjacent to the departmental office. It is best to print to pollack from the Macintosh G4 cube nearby. (Note; print only pages which require color; the quality of B/W pages printed on pollack is worse -- yet more expensive! -- than when printed on the B/W printers.)

On the Mac you can run ``MacSFTP'' to copy over the file from a remote machine. Then

  • PDF file: Double-click the file to open it with Acrobat Reader or Preview, then Print, selecting the appropriate page(s).
  • Word/Excel/Powerpoint file: Double-click the file to open it, then Print, selecting the appropriate page(s).
  • JPG/PNG/GIF file: Run either Preview or Adobe Photoshop or Gimp; from within that program, open the file and then Print.
  • PostScript file: drag/drop the file onto the icon for ``DropPS pollack'' (prints the entire file -- no page selection possible)
Be sure to select printer pollack from the Print browser. If you wish to print onto transparencies, follow carefully the instructions posted on the color printer, or enlist the help of somebody with experience.