Richard Schwaninger

03/07/1996

Contents

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 Features of the Print Manager
• 2 Copyright
• 3 Motivation
• 4 Reference
• 5 Changes
  • 5.1 Version 2.1
  • 5.2 Version 2.2
  • 5.3 Version 2.3
  • 5.4 Version 2.4

1 Introduction

The Laserjet family of printers from Hewlett-Packard is the standard for printers all over the world, from hobbyists up to big companies. Users can print a lot of fancy pages containing text and graphics, but the control of certain features is not possible directly from the computer.

These features are normally controlled from the front panel of the printer (the newer Laserjet 5 no longer has such a panel -- you can directly control it from your MS-Windows program).

1.1 Features of the Print Manager

The Print Manager makes the options on the front panel of a printer available to the user. This way you can conveniently change settings without moving from your computer to the printer. This is especially usefull if the printer is not directly located on your desk (as it will be with most Unix installations).

With the Print Manager you can change options that affect the output of standard text (eg page length, orientation, font), options that affect the quality of the printout or the paper bin from which the pages should be choosen.

You can store specific settings for later (quick) reuse.

2 Copyright

This programm consists of a variety of different parts, some of them have their own copyright. Most notably are Tcl and it's extensions TclX, Tk, Blt and Tix.

The copyright for these packages may be freely retrieved from the internet or from the author.

Parts of this software are based on sources made for a customer. These sources cannot be provided without permission from the customer (contact the author for details).

Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without license or royalty fees, to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation, in electronic format(s), for any purpose, provided that existing copyright notices are retained in all copies and that this notice is included verbatim in any distributions.

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OF THIS SOFTWARE BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND ITS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF THE AUTHOR OF THIS SOFTWARE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

THE AUTHOR OF THIS SOFTWARE SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED HEREUNDER IS ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, AND THE AUTHOR OF THIS SOFTWARE HAS NO OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT, UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR MODIFICATIONS.

This chapter seems necessary.

3 Motivation

The idea for writing this program stems from the fact that I buyed a HP Laserjet 5L which has no front panel at all. No problem if you work with MS-DOS or MS-Windows as the appropriate software is included. A short review of public-domain solutions to this problem revealed that they all lacked a graphical frontend. This was the starting point for writing the Laserjet-Manager.

4 Reference

The most important reference manual is

Printer Job Language
Technical Reference Manual
Edition 5, 1994
5961-0704
Hewlett-Packard

This lists all the necessary data to use PJL in an application.

All Unix-system have one general drawback to MS-Windows. They cannot use the status read-back messages of PJL in a generally portable and legal way as this interferes with the printer spooler.

The current version of the Laserjet-Manager is therefore restricted to a one-way communication with the printer. If you know a solution then contact me.

5 Changes

5.1 Version 2.1

This is the first publically available version.

5.2 Version 2.2

This version was only used internally to test the features of the next version.

5.3 Version 2.3

No important changes to the base funtions. Some small bugs have been fixed.

New features are the configuration possibilities that are now available through a graphical interface.

These are the most important changes:

• scripts may be copied to eg. /usr/local/bin. You have to set the environment variable SOFTDIR to point at the installation directory.

• The processing of the environment variable LANG takes care for more special cases. You may use SOFTLANG if all else fails.

• libg++ is no longer necessary.

• troubles with NIS have (hopefully) gone away.

• configuration of colors, fonts and a lot of other things may be done through a graphical interface.

• printing of help texts has been enhanced, you may now add your own printers directly from the print dialog.

• user specific configuration files are by default put into ~/.SW.

• help pages need less memory (they keep being slow).

• on HP-UX the standard libX11.sl is used. User no longer have to set SHLIB_PATH explicitely.

• bug reports use HTML-forms.

5.4 Version 2.4

No important changes to the base funtions. Some small bug fixes.

The most important changes:

• Installed printers are now better recognized on /etc/printcap based systems (like Linux). The printcap format is an ongoing puzzle, but ljetmgr should find all defined printers.

• Printers may now be added automatically and with configurations files. Configuration files have higher precedence.

• With Linux/Caldera and other Systems using Accellerated-X servers ljetmgr failed to find some fonts and crashed. This should be fixed now and such errors will get catched when ljetmgr starts up.

• Most configuration variables are now checked to be within their correct bounds.

Equation 1:

ljetmgr2.3 + bugfixes = ljetmgr2.4 + bugs