goal: How to set up a printer in MFG/PRO
fact: MFG/PRO All Versions
fact: UNIX
fact: Printers
fix: MFG/PRO, like most other applications with reporting capabilities, allows you to send reports, files, and browses to a variety of output devices and printers either locally, or accessed via a network. There are several steps to configuring a printer within the MFG/PRO system.
Generally speaking, the printer is defined through menu option 36.13.2 Printer Setup Maintenance (mgmgmt05.p). However, part of the configuration required is to specify the printer type. This Printer Type Maintenance is performed through menu option 36.13.1 (mgmgmt04.p).
The standard MFG/PRO system has several default printer types, and logical terminal devices, pre-defined. You must check to verify if your physical printer type is defined here. For example, is there an entry for an HP Laser printer, or an Epson printer, if you are using one of these types of printers? Furthermore, if your printer is not listed here, and if the printer will not emulate one of these pre-defined types, you will need to define your printer type manually. This consists of specifying a series of printer programming, or control, characters that will control the characteristics and behavior for each of several printing situations. The situations include control of:
1) 80 character print jobs
2) 132 character print jobs
3) Bar code print jobs
4) Hardware initialize and reset
Through proper utilization of these control characters, printers can be instructed to modify the printer pitch and font, print landscape/portrait style, produce multiple copies, perform line/form feeds, print banner pages, and possibly many other options depending on the physical printer model. The printer’s manual is the best source for control codes and their purposes.
Once you have defined or located the proper printer type definition in 36.13.1 Printer Type Maintenance, you can configure a printer for use with MFG/PRO. For this, you must use menu option 36.13.2 Printer Setup Maintenance. Here is a definition of each Printer Setup Maintenance field:
OutPut To: Here you will specify the printer’s name as it will be known within MFG/PRO. This name should have some meaningful name that gives some intuitive information about that printer, such as “H/RLaser”.
Printer Type: Here you can select any printer type, as defined previously on through menu 36.13.1 Printer Type Maintenance. Note that as you select the type, the defined control code sequences for that default printer type are automatically applied to this printer. You could specifically alter these codes on this screen for this individual printer if you wished this particular printer to behave differently than the standard printer of its type.
Description: Printer description field.
Lines / Page: The number of lines the printer will print per page.
Max Pages: You may select a maximum number of pages that any print job can generate. A setting of “0” indicates that no limit is set.
Scroll Output: This field will only be set to “Yes” if you are attempting to define a Terminal Output Display that allows use of the arrow keys to scroll the displayed text on the screen. Definition of this type of terminal output device will be discussed later.
Device Pathname: This field will specify a technical sy. stem name, such as a printer share name, or some other syntax that directs the print jobs to the physical printer device on the network. The behavior of this field is different for different Operating systems. On Windows systems this field will specify the share name of a printer, or the word “printer” to select the Windows Captured Default Printer. On a Unix system, for example, this field could contain an actual O/S command that causes a printing action. Indicates whether the Device Pathname specifies a technical system printer name, or a command to be passed to the O/S. When set to “Yes” the command on the Device Pathname is passed directly to the O/S. On Windows systems, this is set to “No”.
Some Examples of Device Pathname Entries:
Device Pathname Entry O/S Effect
//arnt01/supjet1 Windows Prints to a network printer shared as supjet1 off the arnt01 print server.
printer Windows Prints to the Windows Captured default Printer
lp -d supjet1 Unix Passes the unix LP command to the O/S to cause printing at the destination supjet1.
Spooler: SPOOLER FIELD MUST BE “YES” for UNIX systems and No for Windows systems.
Initialize Command: Operating system command necessary to initialize the printer, if necessary. Not required if handled by control codes in any of the control code fields.
Initialize Ctrl: String of control characters to initialize the printer, if necessary. May instead be contained in the 80 or 132 column control code fields. These control characters can be found in the printer’s instruction manual.
80 Column Start: Control codes for the specific printer type and model necessary to initialize the printer for 80 column output and specify characteristics such as font type and size, etc. These control characters can be found in the printer’s instruction manual.
132 Column Start: Control codes for the specific printer type and model necessary to initialize the printer for 132 column output and specify characteristics such as font type and size, etc. These control characters can be found in the printer’s instruction manual.
Reset Ctrl: String of control characters to reset the printer to its original state. May instead be contained in the 80 or 132 column control code fields. T. hese control characters can be found in the printer’s instruction manual.
Reset Command: Operating system command to execute after printing completes, if any such command is necessary.
