17 Bit Software 2: Collection B

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DAN'S PRINT SPOOLER ------------------- The contents of this file and other files in this distribution are Copyright (C) 1988 by Daniel L. Barrans, all rights reserved. This is a shareware product. You may copy and distribute this product freely as long as: 1) No more than a minimal fee is charged for copying and distribution, 2) This file remains intact and is distributed with the software, and 3) The software is distributed ONLY in its original, unmodified state. If you like this product and use it, please send money ($25.00 or thereabouts) to keep me from thinking that I wasted my time. You may not use this product in a commercial environment or a government organization without paying a license fee of $25.00. NOTE: If you fail to pay me for the use of this product, I probably won't be too likely to listen to your suggestions for this or future products. This product was developed and tested using the AmigaDOS 1.3 omega 9 Workbench release, and the Manx Aztec C compiler release 3.6a, although it should also work with Workbench release 1.2. This distribution consists of release 1.4 of the print spooler and associated programs. If you experience any problems while using this software, or if you have suggestions for improvement, please let me know as soon as possible. My BIX name is dbarrans, and my CIS user ID is 75036,2230. The preferred method is thru BIX, because I am not on CIS that often. Dan Barrans - 26 Sep 1988 Send your money to: Daniel L. Barrans P.O. Box 522 Seabrook, MD 20706 WHAT IS THIS STUFF ANYWAY? This distribution contains a DOS handler, a print program, and a control program. The DOS handler sits and waits for stuff to be sent to it to be printed, just like you would send stuff to PRT: to be printed. The difference is that this handler makes a temporary copy of the stuff to be printed in a file on disk somewhere (you decide where), prints the copy at its leisure, then deletes the copy. The advantages to you are that you get your CLI prompt back faster, you can continue to edit and/or delete the original file without messing up what's being printed, and you don't need to worry about the printer being busy when you want to start another print job. The main disadvantage is that you need enough disk space available to hold the temporary files until they are printed. This can theoretically be in any filesystem in RAM, floppy, or hard disk. The print program is just a simple formatted print program I wrote a couple of years ago that I've adapted to use this handler. It can do line numbering and page headers, and looks at the current preferences settings to determine what it can fit on a page. The control program lets you do stuff like listing the files waiting to be printed, rearrange the order of printing, cancel print jobs, and suspend and resume the operation of the printer. The print and control programs need arp.library version 1.1 (or later) in your Libs: directory, but the handler itself does not need the ARP library. PRINT SPOOLER INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS: The distribution contains these files: spool-handler This is the AmigaDOS handler for the print spooler. It should be copied to your L: directory. Mountlist The contents of this file should be added to your Devs:Mountlist file. Print This is an ARP command program that prints files to the spool handler. It should be copied to your C: directory (or somewhere in your search path), and it needs arp.library version 1.1 (or later) to run. PrintC This is an ARP command program that allows you to control printing of spooled print jobs. It should be copied to your C: directory (or somewhere in your search path), and it needs arp.library version 1.1 (or later) to run. RemPRT This is a program to use for removing the standard PRT: handler so it can be replaced by the spool handler. This should be copied to your C: directory (or somewhere in your search path). Readme This file. Put it where you can refer to it if you forget how to use the other files. After the above files are copied to the appropriate places, you should edit your S:Startup-Sequence file to include the following commands: Assign SPOOL: RAM: RemPRT Mount PRT: The Assign command tells the spool handler where to put the temporary copies of the files to be printed. You may change this assignment to another directory if you wish. If you do not assign a spool directory, the spool handler will function just like the standard AmigaDOS print handler, without creating spool files. The RemPRT command tells AmigaDOS to remove the standard PRT: handler from the device list so the new handler can be added. This command may be replaced with "Assign PRT: REMOVE" if you are using AmigaDOS 1.3. The Mount command tells AmigaDOS to mount the spool handler as PRT: so it is available for use. The Print and PrintC command programs automatically use the PRT: handler, and other programs can use the new PRT: handler just like they use the standard PRT: handler. HOW THE PRINT SPOOLER WORKS: The print spooler is an AmigaDOS handler that runs when a program opens PRT:. When PRT: is opened, the handler creates a temporary disk file for the output of the program that opened it, and writes the program's output to the disk file instead of the printer. When the program closes PRT:, the handler then starts another process to print the file. Any number of programs can open the spool handler at the same time, and their output will be printed in the order they finish writing to the handler. After all files are printed, the handler releases all resources it has allocated, and the printer is available to any other program that wants to use it. The spool handler only tries to allocate the printer when it has a file ready to print. If another program is using the printer at this time, the spool handler will wait until the printer becomes available, then allocate it and start printing. You can have as many programs as you want writing to the spool handler at the same time, and they will be printed in sequence. The handler is designed to keep track of all processes using it, independent of each other, limited only by the amount of available system memory and the amount of available disk space in the spool directory. You can determine where the handler creates its temporary spool files by changing the assignment for the SPOOL: directory. This can be changed at any time, but the handler only looks at it when it first starts a new batch of print jobs. To change the spool directory, just wait until there are no jobs waiting to print, and reassign the SPOOL: directory. NOTE: The spool handler acquires a lock on the directory currently assigned to SPOOL:. If this directory is on a volume that is not currently mounted, you will get a requester asking you to mount the volume when you try to open the spool handler. COMMAND DESCRIPTIONS NAME Print - Print files SYNOPSIS Print FILES NONUM/S NOHDR/S NOFORM/S VERBOSE/S DESCRIPTION Print formats and copies the contents of the file or files of its FILES argument to the AmigaDOS PRT: handler. You may specify any number of filenames (including wildcarded filenames) for the FILES argument, which will cause all the named files to be printed on the printer, after first being copied to the print spooler's spool directory. As soon as this command is finished, you are free to do anything you want with the original files, because the spooler is printing from a temporary copy of each file, not the original. The Print command examines the current Preferences settings for the printer to determine how many lines to print between page breaks. It prints a page header at the top of each page, containing the file name, last modification date, and page number, and prints each line of the file prefixed with a line number. This program will work with either the standard AmigaDOS print handler, or with the spool handler. If you have an especially large file to print that will not fit into the spool directory, remove the spool directory assignment using "assign spool:" and then wait for the spooler to finish printing any spooled files. Then you can use Print to print your large file without spooling it. The behavior of Print may be modified by using the following switches: NONUM - this switch will cause Print to not print line numbers at the beginning of each line of text. NOHDR - this switch will cause Print to not print page headers at the top of each page of output. NOFORM - this switch will cause Print to not do a page eject between pages, but to print continuously over the page breaks. VERBOSE - this switch will cause Print to display the name of each file as it is being sent to the spool handler. EXAMPLES Print filename NONUM ; The file will be printed without line numbers. Print *.c NOHDR ; The files will be printed without headers. NAME PrintC - Print spooler control SYNOPSIS PrintC OPTION JOBS DESCRIPTION PrintC allows the user to control various aspects of print spooler operation. If the spooler is not installed, or if no spool directory is assigned, then PrintC will display an error message. The desired behaviour of PrintC may be specified by using one of the following OPTIONs. Each option may be abbreviated by using the first letter of the option, instead of the entire option name. QUERY - query the spool handler to find out about the print jobs queued in the print queue. This option may not be followed by job numbers. This will display information about queued print jobs, like this: job status filesize jobname 1 active 4285 debug.c 2 queued 7732 misc.c 3 queued 7349 (no name) 4 queued 23763 spool-handler.c 5 queued 5871 printc.c The job number identifies the print job to PrintC when using other options. The status shows the current state of the print job. The possible status strings are: active - this job is currently printing. queued - this job is waiting to print. open - this job is currently being spooled. cancel - this job has been cancelled. The filesize shows the size in bytes of the spooled file. The jobname identifies the spooled file. If you send output to the spool handler as PRT:filename, then filename will show up as the jobname. Otherwise, the jobname will be "(no name)". There is one output filename that has a special meaning to the spool handler. If you use the name "PRT:raw", then the spooled output will be sent directly to the printer without being translated by the printer device. If the print spooler is suspended, the above status display will be preceded by "printing is suspended". CANCEL - cancel the specified print jobs. If a job is active, the print will be aborted, and the next queued job will start printing. If a job is queued, it will simply be removed from the print queue. NEXT - move the specified print jobs to next in line to be printed. If a job is already printing, it cannot be moved around in the print queue. LAST - move the specified print jobs to last in line to be printed. If a job is already printing, it cannot be moved around in the print queue. SUSPEND - suspend printing all queued print jobs. The current job and all queued jobs will be suspended. The printer device will not be made available to any other program which uses it directly (such as the standard PRT: handler) until printing is resumed and completed, or all print jobs are cancelled. NOTE: Some printers have an internal buffer which may take some time to empty before printing actually stops. RESUME - resume printing all queued print jobs. If there are queued print jobs, they will resume printing. Otherwise, nothing visible will happen. EXAMPLES PrintC QUERY ; Show the queued print jobs. PrintC CANCEL 1 3 4 5 ; Cancel print jobs 1, 3, 4, and 5. PrintC NEXT 4 6 ; Move print jobs 4 and 6 to next in line. PrintC LAST 2 ; Move print job 2 to last in line. NAME RemPRT - Remove the PRT: handler SYNOPSIS RemPRT DESCRIPTION RemPRT removes the PRT: handler from the AmigaDOS device list. This should be run from your Startup-Sequence file, or before PRT: is used. If the PRT: handler code has already been loaded, this command will not remove the handler, but will display an error message. EXAMPLES RemPRT ; remove the PRT: handler. Mount PRT: ; mount the new handler.