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12. Printing

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We have three printers in the department that are available for general printing. They are named nhp (the default printer), lw and cm. The first is located in the computer room (Rm 223) on the second floor while the last two are located in the Xerox machine room (Rm 116) on the ground floor. All the printers are PostScript printers and so files must be converted to PostScript for printing.

Update May 99 We have reactivated the old HP printer hplj4 and it is now in the PC lab. You may access it from the PCs. In addition, Trevor has kindly donated his printer lj4 and it is in the Xerox machine room.

Note that only PostScript and text files can be printed.

12.1 Printing using lp on RGMiller, Girshick

On these two machines, the native printing command is lp.

To print a file, use

These lp commands will give you an identifier that can be used to refer to your jobs in case they jam the printer, or if you want to cancel the printing. More on that below.

Other printers that can be specified in place of nhp are the laser writer lw and the color printer cm (both are located in the Xerox machine room).

Sometimes, one might wish to save paper by not printing a header page. On RGMiller there is an ugly option to do this:

See section Printing Tips.

You can look at the status of the print queue for a particular printer via

To get a list of all jobs queued on the printer lw, use

To get a list of all jobs on all printers, use

To cancel a print job, use the command

where job_id is your job number obtained from the output of lpstat.

For more information, please see the man pages for lp and lpstat.

12.2 Printing using lpr The lpr printing commands are well-supported only on Playfair. I have been unable to get the SGI software satisfactorily with lpr on the new printer nhp even after hours of experimentation.

To print a PostScript file on our systems, say foo.ps to the printer lw, use

or

The only difference between the two commands is that latter saves paper by not printing a header page. To use other printers, substitute lw by their respective names above.

Note that some of our old printers have a tendency to get stuck. If so, you can remove your job from the queue using the lpq and lprm commands. The command

will return a list of jobs queued to the printer lw. Note the job number of your print job and type

With lprm one can cancel all of one's jobs in one shot:

For more information, see man pages for lpr, lprm and lpq.

12.3 After Sending Your Print Job
It is courteous to remove your hardcopy promptly instead of leaving it lying at the printer. If you suspect that the printer is not responding to your print job, check the status of your job using the lpstat commands explained above. If the printer is jammed, or low on toner, or otherwise not responding, cancel your print job---don't leave it in the print queue! Do not send the same job more than once without cancelling earlier requests.

If you experience printer problems, please seek help. To simply walk away from the printer when it is in a bad shape and not tell anybody about it is inherently abusive.

If you experience printer problems, please send an e-mail to , hktang@stat or jiang@stat stating

1. what you were trying to do;
2. what seemed to be happening;
3. what you did in response.

You will be contacted to see how we can avoid this problem in the future.

12.4 Printing Tips

1. Save paper by printing without a banner page:
   rgmiller% lp -dnhp -o"-nobanner" file
   Replace file with the name of the file you wish to print. To avoid typing this command all the time, you may alias it by adding the line
   alias xxx 'lp -dnhp -o"-nobanner"'
   to your .mycshrc file, replacing xxx with an alias of your choice, and then using xxx as a short form for the full lp ... command. See the faq Unix Alias.
2. Save paper by printing multiple pages per physical page. The commands enscript and psnup can help you cut the number of pages you print by putting multiple columns/panels per page. They are particularly useful for printing that odd e-mail message or two, long computer codes, WWW pages and presentation handouts.

   Use enscript on ASCII (text) files. With the -2r option, two columns are printed per page in landscape mode. Some examples:

   rgmiller%enscript -2r -dnhp infile rgmiller% enscript -2r -o outfile infile

   # Write to outfile # (PostScript file) # instead of printing

   Use psnup on PostScript files. The -2 option puts two panels per page in landscape mode. To get four panels per page (e.g., for presentation handouts), replace the -2 option with -4. Some examples:

   rgmiller% psnup -2 infile outfile} rgmiller% psnup -2 infile | lp -dnhp -o"-nobanner"

   # Write to outfile # Print to new HP # printer

   Replace infile with the input filename and outfile with the output filename, as necessary.

   In Netscape, change the print command to: psnup -2 | lp -dnhp -o"-nobanner". This prints two panels per page in landscape mode.

3. Duplex printing. The printer upstairs ("nhp") prints in duplex mode by default. This is (now) set in the software that drives the printer. There are two types of duplexing you can do with the printer.

   1. bindLongSide---this is what you'd want if you are going to bind or staple the document on the longer (11-inch) side of the paper. This is the default since most of us expect to turn pages left.
   2. bindShortSide---if you want to bind the document on the shorter side (8.5-inch) side. In this situation, you'll be flipping the pages up (like those yellow notepads) instead of left.

   These options can be explicitly invoked with the lp command as shown in the following examples, in which the banner page is turned off; -o"-nobanner" is the same as -o"-h".

   rgmiller% lp -dnhp -o"-nobanner" -o"-duplex bindLongSide" foo.ps
   rgmiller% lp -dnhp -o"-h" -o"-duplex bindShortSide" foo.ps

   To turn off duplexing (desirable for theses, etc.) use:

   rgmiller% lp -dnhp -o"-nobanner" -o"-duplex off" foo.txt

   All of the above commands apply to text and PostScript files.

   Important: Note that the lpr command does not provide control over duplexing!!! All stuff sent to nhp using lpr gets printed duplex.

4. Printing a PostScript file in "non-standard" sizes. If you have a PostScript file that was sent to you with a paper size different from the normal "letter" size, you may face printing problems. Here is how one can print a PostScript file created in A4 paper size (that the Europeans commonly use) to the American letter standard:
   rgmiller% psnup -Pa4 -pletter european.ps american.ps
   The -P option specifies the native size of the file and -p specifies the output size; in the above example, the input file is european.ps and the output is american.ps.

12.5 Setting Up Printers on Windows

12.5.1 Department Printer Map
There are five main HP laser printers available for public use in the department. Below is a summary table for these printers.

To set up any of these above printers for use on Windows, please follow these detailed instructions or an analogous set of instructions.

12.5.2 Setting Up Printers within Statistics Domain
If you are using a Windows workstation within our Statistics domain (e.g., an office or lab PC), it is very convenient to setup a network printer from above table on your machine per user account and you don't actually need the administrator previledge to do that. Just simply follow these steps:

1. Log into a Windows workstation using your Windows account login (it should be the same as your UNIX one). If you don't have one yet, send request to .
2. Click "Start" button, then "Settings" and then "Printers".
3. Select "Add Printer" and it will bring the "Add Printer Wizard" to you.
4. Click on "Next".
5. Select "Network Printer" and click "Next".
6. Do not type anything, just click "Next". The diaglogue box coming up will show you the network printers available to you.
7. Currently, for example under the "Statistics" domain, you should see the following printers:
   • \\STAT-NT-SERVER\HP Color LaserJet 5500 PCL 5c
   • \\STAT-NT-SERVER\HP Color LaserJet 5500 PCL 6
   • \\STAT-NT-SERVER\HP Color LaserJet 5500 PS
   • \\STAT-NT-SERVER\HP LaserJet 4100 PCL 6
   • \\STAT-NT-SERVER\hplj4
   • \\STAT-NT-SERVER\LJ4
   • \\STAT-NT-SERVER\nhp
   HP Color LaserJet 5500 PCL 6 (or PS) corresponds to the color printer in the copy room. HP LaserJet 4100 PCL 6 and LJ4 are also in the copy room, sitting on the desk next to the copier. nhp is the major printer on the second floor which students use most often. hplj4 is in the PC lab on the second floor. However, it has been disconnected.
8. Select the printer you want to setup and then click "Next".
9. The "Wizard" will ask you whether to use it as your default printer. Do whatever you like and click "Next".
10. This completes the Setup wizard and the newly added printer will show up in your printers folder and be available to use.

12.5.3 Setting Up Internet Printers (for Visitors)
Sometimes, the computer you are using can't access the department domain. For example, if you are a visitor to the department, then your laptop (or desktop PC) won't be granted such access. But you can still use the department printers as in above table by setting up appropriate TCP/IP (Internet) ports on your computer. Detailed instruction about setting up such internet printers can be found here or at this link. However, please note that you do need an administrator right to do this.

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