Printing

From Peyton Hall Documentation

Revision as of 16:08, 20 October 2008

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

List of Printers

There's quite a few printers setup on the network. 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 138 (Copier Room, 1st Floor)
  • Xerox Phaser 6350 (color)

    duplex queue name = ps

    simplex queue name = pss

  • HP Color LaserJet 4700

    duplex queue name = hp4700

    simplex queue name = hp4700s

• Room B29
  • Xerox Phaser 4500

    duplex queue name = fred

    simplex queue name = freds

• Room B21
  • Xerox Phaser 4500

    duplex queue name = ethel

    simplex queue name = ethels

• Grand Central Balcony
  • HP Color LaserJet 4700

    duplex queue name = waldorf

Using the printers

From Unix systems

To use a printer from the department Unix machines, simply choose which queue you wish to print to and specify that queue with your print command. For example, if printing with 'lpr', and you want the job to go to 'fred', type 'lpr -Pfred <filename.ps>'. You may prefer to use a graphical print manager, such as 'kprinter' which will let you select various options about the print job before it's sent through.

NOTE:

If you use kprinter to submit print jobs, you may find the '-c' option useful. This will copy the file to be printed to a temporary location before printing it, and delete the copy when finished. This is required if you're piping print jobs to kprinter from acroread, for example, because acroread will see kprinter's return to the shell as the cue to delete the temporary file that it created. kprinter will then complain that the source file does not exist, and won't be able to print the job.

From Laptops

If you have a laptop and would like to configure the printers on it, see the instructions later on in this page for Windows or Mac OS X

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.

WIRELESS USERS:

Because your wireless connection falls outside the department firewall, you will not be able to print. You will have to either use a wired connection, or SSH into one of the computers in the building and print from there.

From Windows

Start Menu -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Printers -> Add Printer -> Network Printer -> Connect to a printer on the Internet -> http://gutenberg.astro.princeton.edu:631/printers/queuename

Where queuename is the name of the print queue (listed above) you would like to print to.

Hit next, and 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 Printing Preferences

  In 10.4, open Printer Setup Utility (located under Applications -> Utilities)

  In 10.5, open System Preferences and click Print & Fax

• Click Add or, in 10.5 click the + sign
• Select "Internet Printing Protocol - IPP" for Protocol
• Enter gutenberg.astro.princeton.edu as the Address
• Enter "printers/" followed by the queue name you wish to print to in the Queue box (List of Printers) . You *must* enter the printers/ prefix or it will not work

  For example, to print to the Xerox 6350, you would enter printers/ps

• Select the proper driver for the printer. If all else fails, you can use Generic PostScript Printer and most printer features should work.

  In 10.4 Select the printer manufacturer next to "Print Using" and select the proper model below that.

  In 10.5 Use the Select a driver to use option, and select the proper driver from the list.

• Click Add

  A dialog may come up and ask you which options are installed on the printer. Usually the default settings are ok, but if you see 'Duplex Unit' as an option, make sure it is selected. If you know offhand that a printer has more than one paper tray (not counting the manual feed tray), then check off the options which are appropriate.

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.

Using these instructions will cause your Mac to print to our print server. As such, options such as duplexing and the tray to use are usually inherited by the Mac; however, if your job isn't duplexing and you would like it to, try the command 'lp -o sides=two-sided-long-edge filename'

Printing Transparencies From OS X

• It is easiest to print from a GUI (OS X-native) Application such as Preview or PowerPoint. If you have a postscript file, open it in 'Preview' rather than print from the command line.
• In the Print dialog, select the proper printer and then select 'Printer Features' from the dropdown.
• Select Media Type: Transparency and the printer should prompt (on its control panel) for transparencies to be inserted into its manual-feed tray.

You might have to put transparencies in the tray. If you do, please use copier or laser printer transparencies. Any others can permanently damage the printer.

FAQ

How do I use 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

(queuename) should be changed to the name of the print queue you wish to use.

Why is my 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, he found that the default dvips configuration was set to assume A4 paper was being used. By including '-t letter' in the options list, this was fixed.

How do I print landscaped text?

A quick way to get some text to print out in landscape mode without loading it in Firefox first is to use a2ps: 'a2ps -1 -L66 -r -B [filename]'. 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

If you use 'kprinter' to handle your print jobs, then you can select landscaped printouts on the "Advanced" screen.

Poster Printing Essentials

We no longer have a poster printer in the department; however there is another printer that you can use to print posters. It is in the map library, on the B level of Fine Hall. You have to use the elevators to get there. The width of the poster paper is 36", and printing a poster will cost you $5, including a tube to carry it around. You just have to show up with your poster in PDF or Powerpoint format on a USB memory stick, and it'll do the trick!

If you need to convert your Postscript document to PDF for transfer to another location for printing, the following command should be used (even if the postscript file itself already defines the document as poster-sized)... otherwise you'll only get a 8.5x11 sized chunk of your document.

gs -sOutputFile=poster.pdf -dNOPLATFONTS -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE - dQUIET -dSAFER -sPAPERSIZE=a0 poster.ps -c quit