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Printing from the
command line
The basic command for printing is the qpr
command. The command takes on the following form:
qpr [-q printer] [-options] filename(s)
For example, if you wanted to print a file called "myfile" to
the Hornbake Library printer, you would type:
qpr -q hornbake myfile
Note that hornbake is the name of the
printer.
Pay for Print (LPCR)
Printers
Some printers require you to pay 10 cent per page to print to
them.
The syntax for qpr is:
qpr [-q queue] [-m cents] filename(s)
You will be prompted for your print account and password, for
example:
rac3:~: qpr -q pg2 -m 10 testfile
Print account? [nothing is shown]
Print account password? [nothing is shown]
The default page limit value is 100 cents (10 pages).
This command sent the file called "testfile" to the pg2
printer, with a page limit of 10 cents. If testfile was more
than 1 page, the other pages would not have printed out.
Other
Options
An additional flag that you can pass to qpr
is the -x flag. With this flag, you can
specify extended arguments, like if you want to print in
landscape format and you can also specify if you want to
print on both sides of the paper. To print in landscape
format to the default printer (as specified in the PRINTER variable, see below) you have to
issue the following command
qpr [-q printer] -x landscape filename(s)
If you substitute duplex
forlandscape, you will be able
to print on both sides of the paper. Note, however, that the
printer you are printing must support duplex printing. The
only public printer that supports
duplex is csc located at the Dispatch entrance of
the A.
V. Willaims Building.
WAM or Glue
Prompt
Use the qpr command to send a file to the
printer. The default printer is defined in the environment variable PRINTER.
Using xqpr on
the Sun Sparcstations ( Glue and WAM only)
When you print on the Windows and the Macintosh workstations,
you will get a graphical user interface prompting you for
your Print Account and its Password. A similar interface is
available on the Sun Sparcstations which is invoked by the
xqpr command. All commands print to the
default printer (defined in the environment variable PRINTER)
unless you specify otherwise.
The procedure for printing from an application varies.
To print to a specific printer, either change your
environment variables, or print to a postscript file (.ps)
and then print to a specific queue from the command line. for
example: qpr -q cscsun filename.ps.
To print from an Xterm prompt without using
xqpr, use the qpr command.
Using the
PRINTER variable
When you print to using the qpr command but
don't specify a printer, the print job will be sent to the
default printer. If you find yourself using the same printer,
you can set it as the default so you don't have to specify
the printer name every time you print a document. For
example, if you want to set the default printer to the
hornbake you would type the following at the
command prompt:
setenv PRINTER hornbake
You can substitute in any printer name you want for hornbake.
So if you want to print to that printer, you can simply issue
the command
qpr myfile
If you want to find out what the PRINTER variable has been
set to, you can issue the following command:
echo $PRINTER
It will echo back the value of the variable.
On Glue and WAM systems you would add the "setenv PRINTER"
command into the .environment file to have it set
automatically each time you log in.
Open the .environment file with your favorite text editor. To
use pico you would type in at the command prompt:
pico ~/.environment
and add at the end the following:
setenv PRINTER someprintqueue
where someprintqueue is the print queue you want and press
the control key and the x key at the same time to save the
.environment file.
Using the
mpage Command
If you want to print multiple pages on one sheet of paper,
you can use the mpage command. Consider the
following example:
mpage -2 -c myfile
This command would print out the contents of
myfile in way so that every 2 pages of the file would
print out on 1 sheet of paper. If myfile normally occupies 8
pages, the output, using this command, will be 4 sheets of
paper. The first paper will have the first 2 pages of
myfile and the second paper will have 2 pages of
myfile, etc.... The output will be sent to the
default printer, as specified by the PRINTER variable.
Using man -t to
Print Formatted man Pages
The man command provides information on the
Unix commands. If you type
man pico
at the command line, you will get information on the
pico command. If you want to print out the
information, you can use the man command
with the -t flag. Instead of sending the
information to the screen, it will send that information to
the printer, as specified by the PRINTER variable. For
example, if you want to print out information about Pico to
the default printer, use the following command:
man -t pico
The output will come out formatted (just like you would see
it on the screen) at the printer.
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