🚀 go-pugleaf

First problem - some printers are notorious for this. I'm not sure if
you can do it except by setting the trays up with special media.

Second problem - if you are using an ASCII channel to the printer, try
adding Ctrl+D at the end of the job.  No newline may follow this. It
must be optional as it will cause an error on a binary channel.

Aandi Inston

Thank You! I have got it working by setting tray2 on the printer to have Letterhead and I am now printing to either letterhead or plain (so that it will not pick up the letterhead when no MediaType is selected). I still have a problem with the data received light staying and will need to investigate further. I thought I had read somewhere about a postscript command that flushes the memory but can't find it again.

Do you mean that Ctrl+D doesn't solve the problem?

Aandi Inston

Not sure what I was doing last night as it seems to work today. BUT although the light does not stay on I now have two other problems. At the end of each page the printer ejects a plain sheet of paper. Also when I try printing more than one file using the Unix command lp only the first file prints and the print queue gets stuck.

Thanx

So, ARE you adding Ctrl+D, with no other text?  Still not clear from
your reply.

Aandi Inston

Sorry.

I have just added CTRL+D at the end of the file. This has sorted out the problem with the light staying on.

I now have an extra sheet coming out after each page is printed. This is a major problem for me.

The other problem is that lp of multiple files means that the first file is printed but the rest are ignored. I can get round this be printing each file individually so I am not too worried.

Is the extra sheet after each job, or after each page of a multi-page
job?

For the second problem, make sure the printer is set up to print an
error sheet.

Aandi Inston

I will set the printer to produce an error and let you know how that goes.

Each postscript file is one page only. When I had ctrl+D at the end of each postscript file I was getting one printed, one plain page per file. So I am now printing each postscript file (without a Ctrl+D) using individual lp commands and then sending a file with just a Ctrl+D as the last file printed. This clears the data received light and forces out a blank page. This is now less of a problem but will still cause some wasted sheets. I assume the data recieved light staying on is not indicating that if I send lots of files I will eventually fill the buffer.

I have had to learn postscript in a very short space of time using examples from the internet. They have now purchased a book but it doesn't give all the information I need. I am sure that anyone else looking at my code will cringe BUT it works (bar the problems above) and now the company I work for (a global business) can produce invoices on plain paper with their logo, nice boxes, shading and a mix of fonts.

Thank You very much for your help.

Some background: The data light means there is an unfinished job.
Because a PostScript file can contain many pages, nothing in the
Postscript job tells it the job has finished.

Hence, you need a way to tell it the job has finished. This is
important for three reasons
- it turns out the data light
- it means that the next job is treated as new, with all initial
settings, rather than inheriting the settings of the previous job
(which can result in errors, incorrect or missing output)
- it stops the error "timeout" which otherwise eventually occurs, and
gets a printed page if you turn on error sheets.

Because this is not part of the PostScript language, few books cover
it. It is printer dependent, but Ctrl+D is a fairly common convention
where the printer has an ASCII connection, over serial or parallel and
sometimes network ports.

Bear in mind that there must be no new line after the Ctrl+D because
that is considered to start a new job.

Aandi Inston