Printing

General Printing

Printing at the Geometry Center is carried out via the standard unix commands. Specifically,

lpr [-Pprintername] filename

sends a file to the named printer, and

lpq [-Pprintername]

reports the status of the print queue on the named printer. If the printer name is omitted, both commands use the default printer for that computer.

Among other things, the lpq command will show you the job numbers of your jobs. This is useful if you change your mind and want to "kill a print job". To do this, type

lprm job_number

Typing lprm without a job number will remove all of your pending jobs.

For information on printing specific kinds of documents, such as TeX files, consult the printing page of the Accomplishing Common Tasks guide.

Formatted Printing

There are a number of useful commands for formatting plain text.

enscript -- the enscript command takes a text file and converts it to PostScript and pipes it to the printer. It puts in page breaks, running headers, and allows the user some control over fonts and layout.
pr -- The pr command is a filter that both reads reads and writes ASCII text. Like enscript it inserts page breaks, and allows some control over layout.
mpage -- mpage reads in plain text or PostScript, shrinks the text, and writes out a PostScript file with multiple input pages on each output page.
lpscript -- lpscript also converts plain text to page formatted PostScript. It does less by way of fancy formatting and more by way of low level positioning control.

Image Printing

To print a raster image file (Softimage, TIFF, SGI, GIF, PPM, Sun) in black and white, the preferred method is to use the command

img2ps imagefile | lpr

For more options, type img2ps without and argument at the command line Black and white printing can be very useful in laying out images for color printing. In this connection, refer also to imgtile and imgfit.

Color Printing

The Geometry Center has two color printers, a lower quality Panasonic color laser printer, and a high quality Tektronix laser printer. The media cost for both is substantial, running about $1 a page for the Panasonic and $8 a page for the Tektronix. Thus, in general it is advisable to consult with the technical staff before printing, to try to minimize waste. Both printers can print to either white paper or transparencies.

Both printers can print both PostScript files, and raster image files in certain formats. The pertinent commands are given below. The command names are linked to their respective man pages.

pan -- print a raster file on the Panasonic printer
ps2raw -- used to pipe PostScript output to the Panasonic printer
imgtek -- print a raster file on the Tektronix printer
pstek -- print a PostScript file on the Tektronix printer.

Printer Names and Locations

To determine the names and locations of Center printers, or to determine what printer is the default for your computer, consult the the Center printer map.

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Comments to: webmaster@geom.umn.edu
Created: Fri Sep 8 11:39:00 1995 --- Last modified: Jun 18 1996