Updated May 22 2003
Printing or getting our test code to
the copier
My guess is that most of you are using some version of Microsoft
Windows so we'll start there.
MS Windows in general
Microsoft's Windows operating systems use printer drivers that format
your files for printing. This formatting is not wanted when we are
testing our files. To see what I mean select your printer driver
and change the port to print to file, then open our test file in notepad
and print it. Open your new file and view all that was added.
We just want what's in the file to go to the printer not all the
added commands. We can do this by sending the file directly to the
printer bypassing any applications or printer drivers. There are
many ways to do this, here are but a few.
All examples will be using LPR/LPD
MS Win 9x/me
This version of Windows does not come with a LPR client. Canon
Inc has made and is freely distributing a small light weight LPR client.
Download and install this application. There are many other
LPR ports, please use the one you like best. Anyway the Canon LPR
does not support command line LPR so we need a work around. Create
an LPR port to the printer. Now capture the LPR port to a free lpt
port like lpt2. Since our files are all ASCII when can now send
them to the printer using the following:
c:\copy mytestfile lpt2
lpt2 will be redirected to the LPR port and will send the file
untouched to the printer.
MS Win 2k/XP
These versions of windows do have a LPR client. It is installed
when you install "Print services for UNIX". To send our files to
the printer, use the following from the command line:
lpr -S <ip address of printer> -P <queue name> mytestfile
For your queue name, check here.
lpsystem
Many UNIX versions use the lpsystem print subsystem. For these
machines you just need an LPR port setup to the printer and then use the
following command:
lp -d<printer> mytestfile
Other
There are many other OSes and print subsystems with many different
methods of printing. Help for many of them are on different pages
on this site. If you are having a hard time with yours, ask for help.
That's it. You are now getting the files to the printer
untouched. What's next?