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Date:      Tue, 20 Jan 1998 20:18:43 -0500
From:      Randall Hopper <rhh@ct.picker.com>
To:        Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
Cc:        emulation@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: DOSCMD: How do you set up printing?
Message-ID:  <19980120201843.31316@ct.picker.com>
In-Reply-To: <199801190111.LAA00349@word.smith.net.au>; from Mike Smith on Mon, Jan 19, 1998 at 11:41:06AM %2B1030
References:  <19980118173724.32263@ct.picker.com> <199801190111.LAA00349@word.smith.net.au>

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Mike Smith:
 |> QUESTION #2:
 |>      How do you set up printing for LPT1:?
...
 |> I added this to my doscmdrc:
 |>     assign lpt1: direct /dev/lpt0
...
 |
 |Your assign syntax is incorrect.  The doscmd configuration parser is an 
 |obscene and thoroughly disgusting piece of code.  The correct syntaxes 
 |are:
 |
 |assign <dos-device> direct
 |assign <dos-device> <printer-name> [<timeout>]

"assign lpt1: direct" w/ the int17.c patch works like a champ, sending it
immediately to the device, with no annoying page flush.  Just what I
wanted--Thanks!

The man page is what confused me.  It describes one combined form (where
direct and timeout are optional and path is mandatory) and not two.  A quick
touch-of-the-docs will fix that.

 |> Finally, each 30 second flush always printed and ejected the page, as if
 |> some S/W were injected a formfeed (^L) character in there on a flush.  Is
 |> there a way to suppress this spurious formfeed?
 |
 |This may be an issue with your printer configuration, or with the DOS 
 |application.  There is nothing in doscmd that will insert a formfeed 
 |when a job is flushed.
 |
 |To perform a queued print job, doscmd simply forks off "lpr -P <printer>"
 |and feeds data printed to it.  After the timeout, it closes the pipe, 
 |which causes lpr to commit the job.

Oh, OK.  I didn't realize it was spooling it.  Thought it was doing direct
writes to the printer device only.  That being the case, my printcap is
inserting the page ejects on my print jobs to my laser, which explains that.

I'll just point it at the raw device for convenience.  On a single-user
system, that's a reason way to go.

Thanks for the help,

Randall



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