Tony Summers wrote:

Can I extend this thread a little ?

> From Ken's reply it would appear that when we leave our venerable HP3000
with its integrated
> spoolfile management subsystem,  the responsiblity for controlling the
printers is transferred to the
> application.  Arrgh !

Not really.  It sounded like they were sending the file directly to the
printer, in which case you need to add at least a trailing form feed or,
preferably, the reset sequence.  Any Unix or Linux system does have a print
spooler which, when set up correctly, will do this for you.  Set up is not
as simple as on the HP3000, but that's mainly because MPE only supports HP
printers.

If you're trying to write shrink-wrapped software, the lack of standard
printing is a big problem compared to Windows.  Generally, you either print
plain ASCII output or require a Postscript printer or output in a
higher-level formatting language (troff/Tex or their intermediate formats).

I'm not sure what capabilities of the MPE spooler people would miss.  Most
(maybe all) Unix spoolers support priority and multiple copies.  Few provide
any support for forms mounting (AIX does).  In theory you can resume
printing on a specific page with MPE; Unix can't support that because
there's no standard spool file format.  There aren't exactly environment
files on Unix, but you can specify printer-specific options with the lp
command, and it's relatively easy to add your own filters.

Ken

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