Printer Groups. System: Getting Started. Overview. Defining a printer group

Transcription

1 1 System: Getting Started Printer Groups Overview Printer groups allow you to define groups of printers for use by everyone, or for assignment to individual users. Printer groups can include local printers, network queues, stacks, disk files, and screen display. Specific printer groups may be assigned to CounterPoint users through Setup / System / Users. This document explains how to define printer groups. Defining a printer group Select Setup / System / Printer groups. 1. Printer group number Enter the printer group number.

2 System: Getting Started - Printer Groups 2 Press: 1 To define the public printer group. (See the Using the public printer group section on page 6 for more information.) To display a list of existing printer groups F1 To scan through the existing printer groups When an existing printer group is displayed, press: F3 To delete this printer group 2. Description Enter a description of this printer group. For a new printer group, press: F2 To copy an existing printer group. (See the Copying a printer group section on page 5 for more information.) NOTE: For printer group 1, Public printers appears as the default for this field [printers] You may enter up to 15 printers in fields Select from the following printer types: Type Description Device ID Normal A printer physically attached to a local port LPT1, COM1, /dev/lp0, etc. Screen Displays on-screen, with no hard copy n/a Print to disk Stack Queue Windows Unix Local Output is spooled to a disk file in the REPORTS directory for the associated company, and may be accessed using System / Spooled reports Same as Print to disk, but output is pre-stacked for manipulation as part of a stack of grouped reports A network print queue defined by your network operating system Output is sent to a printer defined in Microsoft Windows A printer physically attached to a Unix workstation Leave <blank> when you are through entering printers. n/a the name of the stack the name of the queue Default or Select /dev/tty2a, etc. NOTE: In order to force a hard copy or disk file to be created for vital reports, screen display is not available in the printer selection window when audit trail reports are printed. Displaying reports to screen: See Conventions for additional information.

3 System: Getting Started - Printer Groups 3 Description Enter the description of this printer that will appear on the printer selection window. Device ID Enter the device ID for this printer. For a Windows printer, select: Default Select To automatically use the Default Windows printer when this printer is selected To Select a printer from the Windows Print Setup window at the time of printing The device ID is the name that your operating system recognizes for the printer. For example, likely device names for Windows computers would be LPT1, LPT2, etc. Likely device names for Unix computers would be /dev/tty1a, /dev/lp0, etc. NOTE: You can print to a text file by creating a normal printer and specifying the file name as the device ID. For example, if you define a normal printer with a description of Print to file and a device ID of PRINTME, when you select Print to file from the printer list, you will create (or overwrite) a file called PRINTME in the top-level CounterPoint directory. Windows printers For Windows printers, if you specify Select, the Windows Print Setup window will appear when you select the printer in CounterPoint. Although this window allows you to change fonts and specify other attributes for the printer (e.g., landscape or portrait mode), keep in mind that most fonts are proportional. Using a proportional font will cause report columns to misalign. Windows-type printers use a default font of Courier or Courier New. Courier fonts do not contain line draw characters, so grids do not print properly on reports and user-defined forms. CounterPoint now allows you to specify the font and font size for Windows printers. To specify a different font, create the file USERFONT.INI in the CounterPoint top-level directory. The USERFONT.INI file must contain a [Defaults] section with one UserFont entry. The format of the UserFont entry is: FontName,CompressedSize,NormalSize FontName must be 20 characters or less, and the sizes must be two digits or less. An example of USERFONT.INI would be: [Defaults] UserFont=CP-Courier,7,12 In this example, CounterPoint would use the CP-Courier 7 point font for compressed print and CP-Courier 12 point font for normal print. You can specify the font size and style for Windows Point of Sale printers by using Setup / Point of Sale / Device codes.

4 System: Getting Started - Printer Groups 4 Network queue printers For some networks (e.g., Window NT) the file server name can be included in this field (e.g., \\FS1\MAIN_LASR). WARNING: When you print to a network queue, any network spooled printer settings (e.g. NetWare CAPTURE settings) for LPT1 are lost, because LPT1 is the device through which CounterPoint accesses the network queue. If you prefer to use devices that have been externally redirected to network queues (e.g., using the NetWare CAPTURE command), don t select a printer type of Queue. Instead, select a printer type of Normal, and specify the appropriate device ID. If your queue name is too long to fit in this field, you can use the files QSTART.BAT and QSTOP.BAT to substitute a different name. (See Network Print Queues for more information.) Lines For non-windows printers you may define up to 90 lines per page for printers of type Normal, Disk, Stack, Queue, and Local. Windows printers automatically print the maximum number of lines that will fit on the page based on the font size. NOTE: User-defined forms are not affected by this feature and have always offered the ability to control the lines per page. Printer type This field is skipped for a Windows printer. Enter the number of the printer type that corresponds to your printer. Many printers are similar to each other. For example, an Epson printer uses the same control codes as an IBM. NOTE: If you cannot find your printer type on the list provided, try using one of the other printer types listed. If none of the pre-defined printer types work with your printer, choose type Other and enter the compress and normal codes as described below. Compress codes This field appears in a pop-up window only if you select a printer type of Other. Enter the hexadecimal code(s) that cause the printer to print in compressed character width (15-17 character per inch). Some printer manuals present control codes only in ASCII or decimal format. These must be converted to hexadecimal format for entry in this field. Hexadecimal conversion table: See the Hexadecimal conversion chart in Technical Notes for more information. On Unix systems, if a printer is a local printer, only 48 characters may be entered here. (A local printer is one that is connected to the back of the terminal instead of to the CPU.)

5 System: Getting Started - Printer Groups 5 Normal codes This field appears in a pop-up window only if you select a printer type of Other. Enter the hexadecimal code(s) that cause the printer to print in normal character width (usually 10 characters per inch). The notes for Compress codes apply to this field as well. Reset codes This field appears in a pop-up window only if you select a printer type of Other. Enter the hexadecimal code(s) that cause the printer to clear all control codes and reset to factory default settings. The notes for Compress codes apply to this field as well. Reset codes are sent to the printer when a print job is complete. Comprs? Select: Yes No To print in compressed mode on this printer To print in normal mode on this printer If you answer Yes, when reports, forms, or labels are printed, the Compress codes are sent to the printer prior to printing, and the Normal codes and Reset codes are sent after printing. NOTE: The pre-defined forms supplied with CounterPoint are 80 characters wide. If you want to print these reports full-size, rather than compressed, be sure to define a printer that is not compressed. (You can define the same printer a second time, using the device ID, to print compressed reports.) 18. Default printer number Enter the field number that defines the default printer for this group. To use the first defined printer as the default leave blank. Whenever the printer selection window appears (i.e., during report printing), the default printer is automatically highlighted. Copying a printer group At Description for a new printer group, press F2 to copy an existing printer group. Copy from printer group number Enter the number of the printer group to copy. Description Enter the description for the new printer group.

6 System: Getting Started - Printer Groups 6 Using the public printer group A printer group with an ID of 1 is considered to be the public printer group. The printers defined in this group are available to all CounterPoint users. NOTE: Printers defined in the public printer group are available in addition to any printers defined in the user s printer group. If a printer is defined in both the public printer group and the user s printer group, that printer will appear twice in the printer selection window. Using other printer groups Printers defined in printer groups other than public printer group are available only to those users who are assigned the appropriate printer group in Setup / System / Users. When using WAN/Workgroup Option, each workgroup can also be assigned a non-public printer group. Any user logging in and specifying a workgroup will have access to all printers in printer group 1 (the public group), all printers in a printer group that has been assigned to them in Setup / System / Users, and all printers in the printer group assigned to their current workgroup.