Stigers, Greg ~ AND writes:
>
> OK, I'll ask: we are using MPE's Network Printing for what I regard as
> pretty plain vanilla printing, where programs print to file equations,
> which file equate to a class of LDEVs, which are set up in NPConfig. The
> ONLY 'catch' is that our programs generate PCL overlays on
> printer-stored forms. I have discussed this with a listmember off list,
> who recommends postscript over PCL, since some network devices think PCL
> or embedded graphics is talking to them, and hose the transmission. But
> as described, has anyone had this use of MPE Network Printing NOT work,
> and determined that it could not be made to work?

We use an old version of LaserSoft to print student transcript data onto
printer-stored forms.

It works OK via DTC serial printers.  It also works OK via NetPrint92
network printing.

It does NOT work OK via vanilla MPE network printing.  If I recall correctly,
a valid transcript page (form + data) is printed, followed by a page with
just the data fields and no form, followed by a blank page.

LaserSoft was discontinued by the vendor, so there's no vendor to talk to
regarding workarounds.  Because these electronic form spoolfiles can be
nastily complex with monstrous PCL strings, and because it works OK under
NetPrint92, so far I haven't been able to work up the enthusiasm to open an
HPRC call about this.

> I am sure that many
> fine third-party products would simplify this greatly, and manage it
> better, but we want to make a go of using what shipped with the box.

I am attempting the same thing, but with less than acceptable success.  Network
printing has been my only major teeth-gnashing disappointment with 5.5.

There are other network printing problems besides electronic forms.  The
perf-skip / auto-page-eject CCTLs of %102 and %103 aren't handled properly
under network printing.  We killed several trees worth of special forms that
need to print 64 lines per page by disabling perf-skip; good old network
printing would print 60 lines, then page eject, then print the last 4 lines at
the top of a new page.  An HPRC call was opened, and a quickie binary patch
was applied to OUTSPTJ.PUB.SYS which fixed the problem.  A formal site patch
was received last week, but the patch had a bug and had to be backed out.

I recently migrated all of our TTYPE/TVFC files to the new 5.5 setup file
format.  As soon as I did that, users with DTC serial printers started
complaining about an extra leading blank page at the start of some reports.
Investigation revealed that spoolfiles with setup files and a leading %061
CCTL would result in an initial blank page on serial printers but would work
OK on network printers.  An HPRC call is still open about this.

There are additional (unsolved) issues.  After each major spooling patch, I get
naively optimistic about network printing and attempt to migrate some of our
NetPrint92 printers over to MPE network printing.  Users immediately start
complaining about reports printing in the wrong font size, and I'm forced to
switch back to NetPrint92 without being allowed enough time to investigate.
Sigh.

And don't even get me started about the related issue of the lack of PJL /
Page Level Recovery support for the LPQ series impact printers.  Without
PJL/PLR, if you're using MPE network printing to print to a LPQ printer and
you have a paper jam and you need to backspace and reprint mangled pages, your
only option under MPE network printing is to start over from page 1.  Which is
a total joke that makes MPE network printing completely unusable for
high-volume impact printing.  Thus we still use Netprint92 to drive our LPQ,
because it offers true backspacing functionality that doesn't have to go all
the way back to page 1.

A firmware upgrade we installed in our LPQ last summer sort of had PJL support,
but testing revealed that it was bizzarely unpredictable, and the lab said
no, PJL still isn't there yet.

Mark "Wishing 5.5 network spooling was as cool as 5.5 POSIX" Bixby
--
Mark Bixby                      E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Coast Community College Dist.   Web: http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/
District Information Services   1370 Adams Ave, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-5429
Technical Support               Voice: +1 714 438-4647
"You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish." - tunefs(1M)