Printing

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"Dead tree format" documentation is still widely used, and here you'll find information on how to use it yourself.

List of Printers

From Unix Systems

There's quite a few printers that can be accessed from the Unix systems. If there is a duplex and a simplex queue listed, the duplex queue prints on both sides of the page while the simplex queue does single-sided printouts.

NOTE:

The duplex/simplex queues will only set that printing style if there is no information in the postscript file to override it. So if you're just sending plain postscript to a printer, the duplex queue will by default print it two sided, and the simplex queue single-sided. However, many programs that generate postscript will now add information to the file to say if it should be single or double sided. The queue will not override this decision. If you want to print single sided with a program that does this (for example, Acrobat reader or enscript) you must tell it to print single-sided!

• Room 146
  • Xerox Phaser 6350 (color)

    duplex queue name = ps

    simplex queue name = pss

  • HP Color LaserJet 5500,

    duplex queue name = color

    simplex queue name = colors

    transparency queue name = colort

• Room 29
  • Xerox Phaser 4500

    duplex queue name = fred

    simplex queue name = freds

• Room 21
  • Xerox Phaser 4500

    duplex queue name = ethel

    simplex queue name = ethels

• Room 25 (in hall)
  • HP DesignJet 650

    queue name = fawkes

From Laptops

If you have a laptop and would like to configure the printers on it, you'll need to know the IP addresses of the printers:

• Xerox Phaser 4500: fred.astro.Princeton.EDU. has address 128.112.24.25
• Xerox Phaser 4500: ethel.astro.princeton.edu has address 128.112.24.212
• Xerox Phaser 6350: phaser.astro.Princeton.EDU. has address 128.112.24.222
• HP 5500: hp5500.astro.Princeton.EDU. has address 128.112.24.17
• HP DesignJet 650: fawkes.princeton.edu has address 128.112.24.87

Linux machines may be able to just send to the queue name on gutenberg, as in 'lpr -Pps@gutenberg'. Or, if your machine uses CUPS, you may be able to find the printer in the "shared printers" area of your print client (though this doesn't always work well with the command line tools).

If your machine uses CUPS for its printer setups, then you can also edit the "ServerName" line in /etc/cups/client.conf to read "gutenberg.astro.princeton.edu". This will setup all the CUPS client software on your laptop to talk to our print server here, and no additional changes are needed.

NOTE:

Doing this means if you have a local printer setup, for example one you use at home, it will not work anymore unless you change the ServerName back to what it was.

The Xerox printers are also very user-friendly in helping you to install drivers on your machine for them. If you're running Windows or Mac OS, point your web browser to the printers' built-in web servers at http://phaser.astro.princeton.edu, http://fred.astro.princeton.edu and http://ethel.astro.princeton.edu. There's a link there for installing drivers, and it seems to work well for everyone who's tried it so far.

From Windows

One way of setting up printers in Windows, that has worked for at least one user:

Settings -> Control Panel -> Printers -> Add Printer -> Local Printer -> Create a new port: Standard TCP/IP Port -> (Enter IP address of printer)

Then find the printer driver you downloaded and installed, or that came with Windows if it's included. Print a test page and verify it worked, and you're all done.

From Mac OS X

• Open Printer Setup Utility (located under Applications -> Utilities)
• Click on Add
• Select "HP Jet Direct - Socket" for Protocol
• Enter the IP address of the printer you want to setup (List of Printers)

  In most cases, as soon as you finish typing the IP address, OSX should discover the printer and automatically pick the proper driver, but if it doesn't, select the printer manufacturer next to "Print Using" and select the proper model below that.

• Click Add

  A dialog box asking you for Installable options might show up. In most cases it's safe to just click Continue, since it seems like OSX is able to detect the printer's configuration.

Repeat for any other printers you want to configure. The last printer you add is always selected as the default -- if you want to print to a different printer by default, highlight the printer and click "Make Default" at the top of the Printer List window.

Since these instructions print directly to the printer instead of using our predefined queues, options such as duplexing and the tray to use are set in the dialog box when you go to print.

If you'd like to print duplex at the command line, try the command 'lp -o sides=two-sided-long-edge filename'

Printing to a specific printer by default

By default, your print jobs will go to the queue "ps", which is the duplex queue on the Xerox Phaser 6350 in the copier room. To change this to a different printer, set the values of PRINTER and LPDEST in your shell dotfiles. For .cshrc:

setenv LPDEST (queuename)
setenv PRINTER $LPDEST

For .bashrc:

export LPDEST=(queuename)
export PRINTER=$LPDEST

...where (queuename) is the name of the print queue you wish to use.

Using LPR

Use the command 'lpr' to print your document. Eg:

lpr myfile.ps

...will print "myfile.ps" on the Xerox Phaser 6200 in room 101 (ps) by default.

To change which printer is used, use the '-P' option followed by the queuename. Eg:

lpr -Pcolort myfile.ps

...will print "myfile.ps" on the HP 5500 in room 101, on transparency media

Odd-sized Pages on Fawkes

Mario Juric did some legwork and figured out how to get pages on Fawkes that are not a standard size: The (first) magic command is:

gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=<width> -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=<height> -sDEVICE=dnj650c \
   -sOutputFile=<tmpfile>.dnj <tmpfile>.ps

where <width> and <height> are the width and height of the plot in "points" (1 inch == 72 points), while <tmpfile>.ps is the file you're trying to print out and <tmpfile>.dnj is a temporary file which you'll then send to the plotter. Maximum width is 36" (== 2592pt).

Example: In my case, I had a file named huge.ps, which was ~74" tall, so I rounded up the height to 75" (== 5400pt)

gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=2592 -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=5400 -sDEVICE=dnj650c \
   -sOutputFile=huge.dnj huge.ps

After you do this, use:

lpr -Pfawkes -l <tmpfile>.dnj

to send it to the plotter (where -l is lowercase L, not number 1). After that, you may safely delete huge.dnj.

The step with the temporary file can be omitted by specifying to Ghostscript a program to pipe to instead of the output file (eg, '-sOutputFile="|lpr -Pfawkes -l"'). Or so the docs say (I have not tested it).

dvips output shifted vertically

Ed Jenkins ran into an issue where the output from dvips was shifted up on the page, sometimes cutting things off and definitely throwing off any centering of the page vertically. After some trial and error, here's what he found:

Solution: The default assumption with the dvips configuration must have been set 
          assuming that A4 paper is being used.  To override this, include 
          "-t letter" in the options list.

Using 'a2ps' for landscaped text

Here's a quick way to get some text to print out in landscape mode without loading it in Netscape or Mozilla first:

a2ps -1 -L66 -r -B [filename]

or

cat [filename] | a2ps -1 -L66 -r -B

Here's what the options mean:

-1 = Predefined font size and layout for 1 virtual page
-L66 = Print 66 lines/page
-r = Print in Landscape mode
-B = no headers