Advanced Printing Software is a network printing service. It manages jobs and printers from anywhere on the local network regardless of type of printer. It provides a smart link between you and the available printers.
When you use printers managed by Advanced Printing Software, you gain several benefits. These include:
Submitting jobs to logical printers instead of a specific hardware device. The job you submit to a logical printer is validated to make sure a physical printer exists to print the job correctly. The print system directs your job to the appropriate physical printer if one exists, or rejects your job if one doesn't exist.
Sending your print jobs to any of the available printers without using complicated setup procedures. All you need to know is the physical location of the printers.
Monitoring the status of your print job. After you send your job to a printer, you can monitor its progress using either a graphical user interface (GUI) or command line interface (CLI).
Receiving notification of your print job's status. This includes notification that a particular printer is not in service or that your print job is completed.
Obtaining improved administrator support. By using the integrated printer and job management tools, your administrator can better maintain the print system.
Interoperating with legacy BSD-based printing system. Advanced Printing Software accepts print requests issued by lpr/lp commands and provides the basic functionality required to process them. It can also forward jobs to remote lpd servers and printers.
The following terms will help you understand how Advanced Printing Software processes your print requests.
Job - a collection of one or more documents that are to be printed as a unit.
Server - A system process that provides print services. There are two kinds of servers: spoolers and supervisors.
Logical printer - A software representation of one or more physical printers. You direct your print request to a logical printer whose characteristics fit the needs of the job. Logical printer objects reside in spooler processes and their databases.
Physical printer - A software representation of a physical device. Physical printer objects reside in supervisor processes and their databases.
Physical device - An actual output device with specific characteristics and capabilities. Examples include an HPLaserJetIII or Xerox 4230 laser printer.
Queue - A queue serves as a pool that holds jobs until they are ready to print. Logical printers insert jobs into a queue; physical printers take jobs from the queue.
Object - An abstraction used to represent various entities, such as printers and queues. Each print system object contains a collection of attributes.
Attributes - Characteristics of an object relating to its identity, physical makeup, or status. Every print system object contains a collection of attributes that provide information about that object. For example, the printer-state attribute indicates the current state of a printer, such as idle or printing. When you submit a job, you can specify attributes for your job and the documents it contains.
In addition to the command line interface that is described in this book, the Advanced Printing Software contains a graphical user interface that can be used to submit print jobs and monitor print jobs.
pdprint is the GUI program used to submit print jobs and pdprintinfo is the GUI program used to obtain job and printer status. These GUIs are accessible from the command line or from the Print Manager icon of the CDE desktop. The following methods can be used to access these programs:
pdprint can be accessed by typing the command on the command line or by dragging and dropping a file that you want printed onto the Print Manager icon on the CDE desktop.
pdprintinfo can be accessed by typing the command on the command line or by selecting Print Manager from the Personal Printers subpanel menu.
The pdprint and pdprintadmin GUIs can also be accessed by selecting Advanced_Printing from the Application Manager.
The syntax for all print system commands has the format shown in Example 1-1.
command option option option-argument object-instance
The four syntax elements are:
Command name
Option
Option argument
Object instance
The complete command looks like this:
pdpr -n 2 opus1.txt
Options and option arguments modify the default behavior of print system commands. The following guidelines apply to using options and arguments with the CLI commands:
Option names consist of a minus sign and a single lowercase or uppercase letter, for example, -h.
All options must precede the operand.
An option argument must follow the option, separated by a space. When an option includes several arguments, each argument must be separated from other command elements by spaces.
Commands interpret options and option arguments in the order in which they appear on the command line.
Not all options work with all commands. Be sure to look at the detailed description of each command to determine which options are valid for that command.
Some commands require you to specify at least one operand. A command operand specifies an object such as a file name on which you want to perform an operation.
Several of the commands that take operands can perform an operation
on different
classes
of print system object.
The class
of an object indicates what kind of object it is, such as a printer, queue,
job, server, or document.
Use the
-c
class
option to specify the operand class of a command.
The following table summarizes the commands available to end users.
| Command | Description |
| pdls | Lists print object attributes. |
| pdmod | Modifies previously submitted print jobs or documents. |
| pdpause | Pauses your own print jobs. |
| pdpr | Submits a print job. |
| pdq | Reports on or obtains status of print jobs. |
| pdresubmit | Resubmits print jobs to another logical printer. |
| pdresume | Resumes your own print jobs. |
| pdrm | Removes (that is, cancels) your own print jobs. |
From this table, you can infer, for example, that
pdls
and
pdls -c job
produce the same results.
The print system manages print jobs by using objects such as printers, jobs, documents, and queues. Every object has attributes and associated attribute values. For example:
Job and document attributes determine the printer requirements of jobs and documents.
Text job attributes provide controls for printing simple text jobs.
Physical printer attributes define the capabilities of the printer device the object represents.
The following sections provide guidelines for using attributes with print commands.
Some attributes have default values. However, for most attributes, the default value is "no value." Attribute values can be modified in several ways.
To override an attribute's default value, use the -x and -X options to specify a different value.
To clear an attribute of all values, use the pdmod or pdset command and specify the attribute name followed by ="{}".
To change an attribute value to its default value, use the pdmod or pdset command and specify the attribute name followed by == with no value.
For a detailed directory of all attributes and their associated values, refer to the Advanced Printing Software Command Reference Guide.
Some attributes can have only one value at a time (single-valued). Others can have multiple values (multi-valued). Yet other attributes can have one or more values, where each value itself has multiple components (complex).
This section describes the syntax for single-valued, multi-valued, and complex attributes.
The syntax for single valued attributes is:
attribute=value
For example:
copy-count=2
The syntax for multi-valued attributes is:
attribute="value_1 value_2 ... value_n"
For example:
content-orientations-supported="portrait landscape"
The syntax for complex attributes is:
attribute="{attribute=value attribute=value attribute=value}"
For example:
access-control-list="{name-type=all-users privilege-level=end-user}"
You can abbreviate attributes and standard identifier values by using only a few letters of each word in the name or value. For example, you can use the abbreviation j-s for the job-sheets attribute, j-c-s for the job-copy-start value, and specify the attribute as j-s=j-c-s.
The system accepts only unambiguous abbreviations. For example, abbreviating job-owner as j-o is not valid because it can also stand for job-originator. You need to specify enough of the attribute or value name such that it is unique.
Examples of valid abbreviations are as follows:
j-ow or job-own for job-ownerj-or or job-orig for job-originatori-a3-w for iso-a3-white.
You cannot abbreviate name values that are not standard identifiers, such as site-specific media or tray names.
Every print job is identified by a unique job identifier, comprised of a server (spooler) name, a colon, and a job number. The server assigns a job identifier when it accepts your job as part of a print request.
Examples of valid job identifiers are galileo_spl:1564 and kepler:1571.
Several commands, such as pdpause and pdresume, accept job identifiers as operands. Such commands also allow you to specify a document identifier in a multi-document job.
Some commands require you to identify a specific document within a multi-document job. A document identifier is expressed as a job identifier, a period, and a document number. Within each multi-document job, the documents are numbered starting with 1.
If kepler:1571 is a valid job identifier, then the second document in that job would be kepler:1571.2.
To get help for a command and its options, enter the command name followed by the -h option. For example, for help on the pdpr command, enter:
%pdpr -h
You can also use
the
man
command to display information about the print
system commands.
For example, for help on the pdpr command, type:
%man pdpr