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Richard Schwaninger


english/ljetmgr.tex
Version 2.3
Document 1.5

11/05/1996

Contents

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 Main Window

 

The main window of the Print Manager is used to select a printer and to set and display all the available options for this printer. Additionally you can save and restore settings from disk.

As you can see this dialog contains the following sections:

menubar
general facilities
printer selection
type of printer to use
option settings
the main interaction panel
profile section
loading and saving of printer profiles
status display
show the actions taken

2.1 The Menubar

  The most important function in the menubar is the selection box Immediate in the Options submenu.

As long as this flag is in the off position all changes you make are only sent to the printer wehn you click on the Set button.

If it is on then every change you make is immediately carried out. If you want to change from Econo-Mode to Quality-Mode and don't want to change any other settings in the printer then it is perhaps best to use this mode.

The small printer icon at the bottom of the main window indicates the state of this flag -- it blinks in immediate mode.

The entry new profile is used to create a new printer profile. See the corresponding section for more details.

The File- and Help-submenus should be self explanatory.

2.2 Selecting a Printer

  When you start up the PrintManager your systems default printer is automatically selected and shown in the print selection box.

All changes you make will be applied to this particular printer.

If you want to select another printer then just open up the combobox by clicking on the down arrow and select any of the printers displayed in the pulldown list. From now on this will be the selected printer upon which all further actions will take place. This change is reflected by showing the new printers name in the selection box.

If your printer is not on the list (or there is not even a single printer in the list) then see the section on installing Print Manager.

2.3 Changing Printer Settings

 

A lot of settings can be changed for any given printer. They fall into four categories Page, Fonts, Printer and Miscellaneous. You select one of these categories by clicking on the corresponding item of the (virtual) notebook.

You may also change to one of the items by pressing Alt and the underlined key of that item (eg n to go to the Fonts section.

2.3.1 Page Setup

 

The options in the page section deal with the output of simple text files. Most advanced print programs will override these settings so don't blame me if they don't work. They are of invaluable use when you want to print all sorts of text files (mostly in combination with the Fonts section.

The Page Format
  This should reflect the type of paper you have actually put into your printers bin. You may temporaily change this if you have more than one bin with different papers loaded. To select a different type of paper click on the Format button and choose one of the available paper sizes.

Number of Copies
  If you want more than one copy of a particular printout then enter the number of copies required in this field. Note that this number is required to be within the limits of 1 to 999.

Number of Lines
  This option lets you change the number of lines printed on one page. If you use a smaller font you may be able to increase this number, if you use a bigger one then you should decrease the default of 66 lines. As with the copies field you have to enter a valid number (which is between 5 and 128).

Orientation
  You may change between portrait and landscape output by clicking on the corresponding option. Note that landscape output may require changing the number of lines per page.

Miscellaneous Page Options
  If Manual Feed is switched on then the printer waits until a button on the printer is pressed before printing a page.

Auto Continue
This option is probably a read-only variable in the printer. I did never use it so I don't know nothing about it.

2.3.2 Font Setup

 

Language
  The printer language option switches the printer into the mode appropriate for the given language (PCL, Postscript or ESC/P). The printer must support this option, otherwise the command is ignored.

The following settings are only valid for plain ASCII-text prints.

Symbolset
  With this option you can choose a character set, that is a convention for the mapping of special characters to font positions.
Pitch
 
Point Size
 
Font
  Pitch and point size together with a font define the look of a font. The font numbers correspond with the fonts built into your printer and may vary between different printer types. You should consult the appropriate printer manual.

2.3.3 Printer Setup

 

Econo-Mode
  If the printer is switched to econo-mode draft pages are printed, otherwise pages are printed in high quality mode (which uses more toner).

Resolution
 
RET
  The printer resolution can be switched back to 300 dpi (for complex images, resolution enhancement technology is used to smooth jagged lines.

Density
  The density setting is available to efficiently use a toner cartridge. Higher values may be used to allow high quality printouts even with nearly empty cartridges.

2.4 Miscellaneous

  This is a space for options that didn't fit anywhere else and also for commands that the printer executes directly.

Mode
  The mode variable is only valid for ASCII text where you can switch between the different line termination characters used by DOS and Unix programs.

Page Protect
  If this option is switched on then the printer reserves printer memory for the rendering of images. This may be necessary for complex images.

Power Save Mode
Some laserjet printers support switching into a powersave (standby) mode. After a selectable amount of inactivity the printer switches to powersave mode. Some printers (eg. the Laserjet 5L) do this automatically so this option has no effect.

The options directly executed by the printer are Eject, Reset and Init.

Eject
This ejects any paper that is currently in the printer.

Reset
resets the printer to power-on state, that is the printer reads all informations from NVRAM again).

Init
resets the printer to factory defaults.

2.5 Profiles

  Profiles are usefull to switch the printer between two or more standard settings. If you find yourself changing from econo-mode to high quality printouts all the time then you may add two profiles named Save Toner and Quality Printout. These settings can be recalled and sent to the printer.

The default profile Default is set to the factory defaults of the printer.

2.5.1 Using Profiles

A profil is activated by selecting it in the list Printer-Profile. All settings will now reflect the values stored in this profile. No values will be sent to the printer at this time to allow you to make small changes to this settings. You have to click onto Set to actually send the settings to the printer.

As you have seen you can change settings after you have selected a profile and then set the printer to your desired values.

2.5.2 Create a New Profile

You create a new profile by using the menu Options/new profile and entering the name of the profile in the field profile name. Pressing Ok will actually create a new profile, will set it to default values and will select it. To make the profile permanent (that is it will be available when you start Print-Manager the next time) use the Save button.

2.5.3 Profile Details

Profiles are stored in the file ljetmgr.usr in the user's home directory. This file contains a plain-text representation of the printer settings and may be changed with any external editor.

3 Installation

 

Although the program tries to automatically guess the correct values for a lot of options you may want to provide different values to some of the options.

All important options can be modified in two locations:

You may now use the configuration editor available through the menu Setup/Config to edit the user specific settings.

All entries in this files may be made with a standard text editor. They are in the following format:

[<thema>]
<name1> = <wert1>
<name2> = <wert2>

Real values have to be substituted for names in < >. If you want to modify the default paper format for example then enter the following code into the config file:

[Pjl-Profile-Default]
Format = Letter

3.1 Add a Printer

If a printer is not automatically detected or need special parameters you may add an entry like the following example:

[Pjl-Print]
Printers = New

[Pjl-Print-New]
Name = my new printer
Device = lpr -Pljet4

These lines add the given printer to the list that is automatically created ([Pjl-Print]Printers), the displayed name will be my new printer and the command to send data to the printer is lpr -Pljet4.

3.2 Settings

Various startup settings of the program may be customized with the configuration file. Here are the most important:

immediate
This setting controls whether commands are immediately sent to the printer.
[PJL]
Immediate = yes
Allowed values are yes and no.

printcap
Normally the program reads /etc/printcap to learn about all installed printers.
[PJL]
Printcap = /etc/printcap

Printer-Spooler
The default program to send data to the printer is the printer spooler. It will be used if no Device = entry is present for a given printer.
[PJL]
PrintProgram = lpr -P%p
When using this command %p will be replaced by the name of the printer the command is sent to.



Richard Schwaninger
Wed Jul 3 19:47:16 MET DST 1996