9.C: Next Postscript Documents 9: Up Printing Files 9.A: Prev Print Queues Contents
Basic

§ 9.B:  Printing Text Documents

A "text" document contains letters, numbers and punctuation, that is, no control character or special printer coding. Text documents can be printed on any printer (although you may need a special command to do it on a PostScript printer).

An example of a text document is your program in the file area.f. To start, use the more command to make sure the file's still OK:

To print this file, use the line printer command lpr followed by the filename (Alternatively, use the lp command): If you do not want your job to print on the default printer, you take the chance of it appearing on the printer in someone's office! To do that, you use the -P option followed by the printer name for lpr, or -d followed by the printer name for lp: Many modern printers are PostScript printers. They are particularly adept at printing graphics and equations mixed with text. (We discuss printing PostScript files in the next section.) While the lp and lpr commands let you send text files to PostScript printers, if you have a PostScript printer, you may also be able to use a really neat utility called enscript. We recommend it for printing text files and for converting text files to postscript: The enscript command automatically prints the file name and date as a header. It also can print multiple logical pages to a single physical page. This saves trees and sometimes makes your output much easier to understand.

To print two logical pages onto one physical page, you give the -2 option. In this case it's probably best to have the two pages appear as two "rows" on the page (as opposed to columns):

You will note when you get your output, that the two row option -2r gives you printout in landscape mode. Landscape mode is more readable when printing two logical pages to a physical page.

If you do not want the output to go to the default printer, use the -P option, just as you would for lpq or lpr. If you wish to send the output to a file first (to view with ghostview or include with other postscript files), use the option -p followed by the filename:

As we have already said, you can check if the printer queue is up, and find out the names of the printer queues, with the line printer queue command: It's a good idea to issue a lpq command after you submit your job, in order to see how it's coming along. However, if your job is small and if the printer is not busy, it may be out of the queue (and in the printer's memory) before you get a chance to finish entering your command.

If your job is not in the queue, in the printer, or printed out, look at some other network printer for it. If it is not there, do not print it out again. (Either the printer is not functioning, or it has gone to another printer; re-entering the command can only make matters worse.)

9.C: Next Postscript Documents 9: Up Printing Files 9.A: Prev Print Queues Contents
Comments and questions to CP-unix@physics.orst.edu.