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SIB ’04 Network Printing Enhancement

Enhancement Summary

This SIB enhancement enables network printing in MPE/iX to work with many non-HP printers via a new option found in the NPCONFIG.PUB.SYS configuration file.  When this option, named PCL_ENABLED, is set to false all PCL sequences at the beginning and end of the spool file are removed.  This enhancement has also introduced a second NPCONFIG option to control flushing of the last printed page.

This enhancement works with many ASCII based printers; however, some printers may need to be interfaced via a HP JetDirect or similar box.  Host-based (Windows only) printers will not be compatible for MPE/iX network printing even after setting PCL_ENABLED to false. HP will support this enhancement on a “best-effort” basis, meaning we will attempt to duplicate and resolve specific spooler problems, but we cannot guarantee that all ASCII based printers are supported by this enhancement.

The new network printing solution has been released on MPE/iX 7.5 in patch MPEMXU1.

NPCONFIG Changes

Two new options have been added to the NPCONFIG configuration file:

1.  PCL_ENABLED which, when set false, removes all PCL initialization/finalization sequences that the spooler otherwise used to send before/after the user data stream. The default setting of this option is TRUE.

2.  FLUSH_LAST_PAGE which, when set true, causes a form-feed to be sent to eject the last page. The default setting of this option is FALSE.

Considerations when setting PCL_ENABLED to false

1. The spooler will automatically treat the PJL_SUPPORTED option as if it were set to false regardless of its actual setting.

2. The PCL_ENABLED flag should be used with empty setup files or with setup files that do not contain any PCL sequences.

3. Setup and environment files are sent to the printer without preprocessing because it is possible to have new (non-PCL) escape sequences embedded for non-HP printers. In other words, the PCL sequences in the Setup and Env files are treated as user data when PCL_ENABLED is false.

4. This enhancement does not change the spooler's behavior regarding CCTL characters. CCTL bytes in spoolfiles will still result in PCL sequences being sent to the printer. Emulation or translation of CCTL characters into ASCII is beyond the scope of this enhancement. However, when the NPCONFIG option SERIAL_PRINTER_SIMULATION is set to true, all CCTL bytes in the %2xx range will be translated to ASCII carriage returns and line feeds.

5. PCL sequences in the banner (using HEADON/BANNER_HEADER and BANNER_TRAILER NPCONFIG options) are removed.

6. The new FLUSH_LAST_PAGE option can control form-feeds. When set to true a form-feed <FF> is sent to flush the last page.  When set to false, the last page might have to be manually flushed by issuing a printer form-feed.  If PCL_ENABLED is set to true the FLUSH_LAST_PAGE setting is ignored.

7. The file being printed and its trailer (if enabled) will be printed on a fresh page, regardless of the FLUSH_LAST_PAGE setting.

8. The format of the header and trailer is similar to those when printed with PCL enabled, namely, there are four sets of three lines each. When PCL_ENABLED is false there will be no indentation between the sets of the banner lines. If the banner line exceeds 79 characters it is split into two lines.