Common Desktop Environment: Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide

6 Configuring and Administering Printing from the Desktop

Contents of Chapter:

Adding and Deleting Printers

To Add a Printer to the Desktop
To Delete a Printer from the Desktop

Modifying the Job Update Interval

Printer Icon Images

Icon File Names and Sizes

To Globally Change the Icon, Printer Label, or Description of a Printer

Configuring the Default Printer

To Change the Destination for Default Printing

Printing Concepts

There are a variety of ways a desktop user can print files. They fall into two major categories: printing from the desktop and printing from an application.

Ways to print from the desktop include:

Selecting a file in File Manager and choosing Print from the Selected menu or the icon's pop-up menu
Dragging a file from File Manager to the Front Panel Printer control or the Personal Printers subpanel
Dragging a file from File Manager to a printer in the Print Manager main window
To print from an application, use the Print command, usually accessed from a menu or other control within the application's window.

Adding and Deleting Printers

This section contains the procedures for adding and deleting printers from the desktop.

To Add a Printer to the Desktop

Add a printer to your system's configuration.
Follow the instructions in the system administration documentation for your operating system.

Run the command:

env LANG=language /usr/dt/bin/dtprintinfo -populate

Restart Print Manager or double-click Reload Actions from the Desktop_Tools application group in Application Manager. Verify that the printer shows up.
Send mail to your users to let them know they should also restart Print Manager or run Reload Actions.

Each time it is invoked, Print Manager reads the system printers configuration list. If it detects a new printer, it automatically creates a new desktop printer action and icon for that printer. You don't need to do anything else to make the printer appear on the desktop.

To Delete a Printer from the Desktop

Remove the printer from your system's configuration.
Follow the instructions in the system administration documentation for your operating system.
Restart Print Manager or double-click Reload Actions from the Desktop_Tools application group in Application Manager. Verify that the printer is gone.
Send mail to your users to let them know they should also restart Print Manager or run Reload Actions.

Each time it is invoked, Print Manager reads the system printers configuration list. If it sees that a printer has been removed from the list, it automatically removes that printer's action and icon from Print Manager and File Manager. You don't need to do anything else to delete the printer from the desktop.

Note: Print Manager cannot remove printers from the Front Panel. Therefore, whenever you remove a printer from your configuration, you should send mail to all users on the system telling them to remove any icons of the deleted printer from the Front Panel.

Modifying the Job Update Interval

To change how often the information displayed in Print Manager is updated, modify the job update interval. By default, Print Manager queries printers every thirty seconds for information on their print jobs. You can change how often Print Manager queries the printers by using the Update Interval slider in the Set Options dialog box (displayed by choosing Set Options from the View menu).

Printer Icon Images

When you add a printer, it is automatically assigned the default printer icon. If you have another icon you want to make available for it, place the icon files in /etc/dt/appconfig/icons/language, or in some other directory along the icon search path. Users can then select this icon to replace the default icon for the printer.

You must create a complete set (large, medium, and tiny) of the icons or they will not show up in the icon selector in Print Manager.

For more information about the icon search path, see "Icon Search Path".

Icon File Names and Sizes

Icon file-naming requirements are:

base_name.size.type

where:

size: l (large), m (medium), t (tiny). For more information about icon sizes, see "Icon Size Conventions".
type: pm (color pixmap), bm (bitmap).

For example, icon file names for medium and tiny pixmap icons for a color printer might be ColorPrinter.m.pm and ColorPrinter.t.pm.

Refer to Chapter 12, "Creating Icons for the Desktop" for more information on creating icons.

To Globally Change the Icon, Printer Label, or Description of a Printer

You should change global printer properties as soon as you add the printer, before users have modified it using Print Manager. Once a user has modified the printer properties using Print Manager, they will not see the changes you make.

Edit the file /etc/dt/appconfig/types/language/printer_queue_name.dt with the desired information for the icon, printer label, or description:

In the ICON field, update basename to the new icon base name.
In the LABEL field, update labelname to the new label for the printer.

Update the text In the DESCRIPTION field.

This is a good place to put the location of the printer, type of printer, and printer contact. To add more than one line, put a \ at the end of the line. For example:

DESCRIPTION This is a PostScript Printer in Building 1\

Room 123. Call 555-5555 for problems.

Configuring the Default Printer

The default printer is accessed when the user:

Drops an object on the Front Panel Printer control
Selects an object in File Manager and chooses Print from the Selected menu or the icon's pop-up menu
Prints from applications that use the default printer

To Change the Destination for Default Printing

To change the default printer for all users:

Open the file /etc/dt/config/Xsession.d/0010.dtpaths.
If /etc/dt/config/Xsession.d/0010.dtpaths does not exist, copy it from /usr/dt/config/Xsession.d/0010.dtpaths
In the LPDEST=printer line, update printer to the new destination for default printing.
If the line does not exist, add a line LPDEST=printer, where printer is the name of the printer you want to be your default printer.
Users need to log out and back in.

To change the default printer for a single user, that user should:

Copy another printer to the Front Panel from the Personal Printers subpanel.

To designate a different printer as the default printer:

Go to your home folder and open the file .dtprofile.
Add or edit a line that sets a value for the LPDEST environment variable:
```
LPDEST=printer_device; export LPDEST
If you are using csh the syntax is:

setenv LPDEST printer_device
```
For example, the following line would change the default printer to the printer whose device name is laser3d.
```
LPDEST=laser3d; export LPDEST
```
If you are using csh the syntax is:
```
setenv LPDEST laser3d
```

Printing Concepts

When a print request is initiated by dropping a file on a printer control, the system proceeds as follows:

The system searches the data-type database for the definition of the object dropped.
If there is a unique print action for the data type (specified using the ARG_TYPE field in the print action), it is used; otherwise, the default print action (dtlp) is used. For example, if the file is a PostScript(R) file, the system uses the Print action for PostScript files. (This action is defined in /usr/dt/appconfig/types/language/dt.dt.) If you used the Create Action tool for this data type, the print command you entered is the unique print action that will be used to print files with this data type.
The file is delivered to the printer using the normal UNIX lp printing subsystem.

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