Formerly titled "EZOUTPUT," this user manual provides a basic guide for generating output and transferring files on LC computers. It outlines naming and locating tips for local network printers and introduces local tools (such as LISTPQ) for discovering and taking advantage of LC's standardized print-queue names. It explains how to convert older graphics file formats into PostScript for printing with LP, LPR, or APR, and explains how to print files using LP, LPR, or APR, whichever is most appropriate for your situation. Using LC Print Services introduces the utilities SCP, FTP, SFTP and NFT, and Hopper. LC's special open/secure File Interchange Service (FIS) is also discussed.

Detailed technical instructions for the tools and techniques introduced in Using LC Print Services are available for FTP (with SFTP), NFT, HTAR, Hopper, and FIS. You may also want to consult the basic guide for using local directories and for general file-handling software at LC, called Using LC File Systems.

For help, contact the LC Hotline at 925-422-4531 or via e-mail (OCF: lc-hotline@llnl.gov, SCF: lc-hotline@pop.llnl.gov).

Local Printers

Print Queue Names

Each printer is associated with one basic print queue whose name always has the form pnnn, where nnn is a three digit number that uniquely identifies that printer. Examples are p005 and p123.

Most printers also have additional print queue names that derive from the basic name and that invoke special processing features. The most common feature names include:

• duplex (two-sided) printing, with the suffix "_dup" appended to the basic name. Examples are p005_dup and p1233_dup.
• transparency (viewgraph) printing, with the suffix "_trans" appended to the basic name. Examples are p005_trans and p123_trans.

Each printer also has one print queue name that reveals its physical location by prefixing the basic name with a building identifier (uppercase B, e.g. B453) and a room identifier (uppercase R, e.g. R1000). Examples of location names are B453_R3040_p294 and B453_R3152_282. Color printers have the extra prefix C_ inserted between the room number and the basic name in their location name (e.g., B453_R3040_C_p294). Note: This printer identification typography is typical for the UNIX or Linux command-line interface. Windows and Mac desktop systems will use slightly different typography.

A single physical LC printer therefore typically has several associated print-queue names, for example:

p302

B453_R3152_C_p302

p302_dup

p302_trans

tsfptr3

Locating Printers

On LC machines, the command lpstat -a will list the names of all active print queues. You can use this command, in combination with the grep command, to find the names of printers in your building. For example, the command

lpstat -a | grep -i b217

returns the following list of 6 print queues for printers in B217:

B217_R144_C_p102 accepting requests since Fri May 23 13:39:27 2008

B217_R144_p222 accepting requests since Fri May 23 13:27:33 2008

B217_R184_p035 accepting requests since Fri May 23 13:03:56 2008

b217c accepting requests since Fri May 23 13:39:27 2008

b217c-d accepting requests since Fri May 23 13:39:27 2008

b217c-t accepting requests since Fri May 23 13:39:27 2008

More details about and options for lpstat are available on the lpstat man page.

Environment Variables for Default Printers

On machines with LPR or APR (see Printing Files for information about LPR and APR), you can set the UNIX environment variable PRINTER (always uppercase) to specify the name of a default printer. Then, if you run lpr or apr without the -P option, output will go to the default printer you specified.

Likewise, on machines with LP, you can set the UNIX environment variable LPDEST (uppercase) to specify the name of a default printer. Then, if you run lp without the -d option, output will go to the default printer you specified.

To set either of these environment variables for your current login session while you run the C shell on any UNIX machine, type

setenv PRINTER printername

or

setenv LPDEST printername

To automatically set either environment variable whenever you log in, include the appropriate one of these lines in the .cshrc file that resides in your home directory.

To report the current value of an environment variable (such as PRINTER) while in the C shell, use PRINTENV:

printenv PRINTER

Printing Files

Some graphics files and other file formats must be converted to a text or PostScript file for printing. A few conversion tools are discussed in "Converting File Formats for Printing" below.

Output Software Compared

The two standard UNIX tools for printing files are LP and LPR. Both have their own distinct related routines for monitoring print queues and for deleting pending print jobs. However, because neither LP nor LPR meets local needs for automatically labeling each page of printed output in a secure environment, a locally enhanced tool called APR adds this feature (among others) on secure systems at LC.

Details about the syntax and options for LP and LPR are available. Type

man lp

or

man lpr

The table below summarizes some user-relevant differences between LP, LPR, and APR. (See Special Cases for details on using APR in some unusual ways and for invoking extra options to control the details of output format.)

	LP	LPR	APR
Related program to show print queue	lpstat	lpq	lpq
Related program to delete print job	cancel	lprm	lprm
Environment variable checked for default printer	LPDEST	PRINTER	PRINTER
Supports security page labels	no	no	yes
Accepts PR preprocessing	yes	yes	yes
Typical command lines	lp -d printername filename lpstat	lpr -P printername filename lpq -P printername	apr -P printername -S level filename lpq -P printername
Specify printer	-d printername	-P printername	-P printername
Label banner page	-t string	-J string	-- -J string
Make num copies	-n num	-# num	-# num
Add security labels	none	none	-S level
Control output format	-o feature	-o feature	none

Security Levels for APR

APR is the only output routine that labels the top and bottom of every printed page with a security-level banner of the form

--- XXX --- Mon May 11 10:30:45 PDT 2008 --- XXX ---

which includes the date printed and a standard security label XXX. You specify the security level of the file(s) you print by using APR's -S level option, which has no default value so you must explicitly state the level, and APR assigns a corresponding security label for XXX according to this chart:

Security Level Specified	Label Output
s, S, srd, 5	Secret Restricted Data
c, C, crd, 4	Confidential Restricted Data
u, U, uncl, UNCL, 1	Unclassified

If you direct APR's output to a file (using the -p option), each PostScript page in that file also bears the security-level banner that you specified with -S level.

Special Cases

Printing to a File

On a secure machine offering APR, you have the option to "print to a file." This lets you save a document as a PostScript file with your specified security banner at the top and bottom of each page. Use the lowercase -p option to name the output file:

apr -p myout.ps -S s project37

You can then preview this output file with PostScript tools before printing it with LPR (because it is already security-labeled) or storing it. Neither LP nor LPR offers a corresponding option to "print to a file."

More Output Control

APR Features

On a secure machine offering APR, you can specify additional output features by using any of these additional APR options:

APR Option	Output Feature
-L	rotate output pages to landscape (132- characters/row)
-2	print output in two columns
-W	truncate lines too wide for the page (default wraps them onto next line)

On LC SCF machines, you can specify which text-to-Postscript converter APR will invoke privately when you run it. Set the environment variable XENSCRIPT to the path name of the converter that you prefer, where the current choices are:

/usr/bin/enscript

/usr/bin/nenscript [default]

Preprocessors

A variety of standard preprocessing tools can be used to control the output characteristics of a text file that you then pipe ( | ) to LP, LPR, or APR for printing. Among the most commonly needed preprocessing sequences are:

Command Line	Output Feature
nl -ba file | lp ...	number each line
pr -d file | lp ...	double space all lines
pr -l n file | lp ...	set the lines/page to n

Test these locally on a small file when you first use them, since implementation details and command interactions often vary by vendor, version, and platform. Note: Preprocessed files can be piped into APR by specifying "-" as the file name. For example,

pr –d file | apr –P myprinter –Su -

Using -o Settings

On LC OCF machines, you can activate latent output-control features of the Common UNIX Print System (CUPS) by specifying them with the -o option on the execute lines of LP, LPR, and LPOPTIONS. You can control output with -o in three (related) ways:

• LP: Add one or more invocations of -o to your usual LP execute line to control output for this print job only, such as:

lp -d p222 -o landscape -o cpi=12 myfile

• LPR: Add one or more invocations of -o to your usual LPR execute line to control output for this print job only, such as:

lpr -P p050 -o job-sheets=standard -o media=letter,transparency myfile

• LPOPTIONS: Add one or more invocations of -o when you run lpoptions to create a permanent .lpoptions file in your home directory that will apply the specified -o features to every subsequent LP or LPR print request (that you make on an OCF machine). For example,

lpoptions -p p123 -o sides=two-sided-long-edge

The examples above reveal that each use of -o takes a single argument (although it may in turn have several subarguments), so you must overtly invoke -o several times to specify several different output features on one execute line. Additional information and documentation about CUPS is available on LC machines at http://localhost:631/help or on the Internet at http://www.cups.org/.

Arguments for -o include:

cpi=n

sets horizontal characters per inch (default is 10).

lpi=n

sets vertical lines per inch (default is 6).

fitplot

scales the print file to fit on the page.

landscape

rotates the text 90 degrees [see also sides below].

media=size

specifies a paper size (choices are a4, letter [default], and legal).

number-up=count

Print File Conversions

Some graphics file formats may need to be converted into another file format before they can be printed, including:

• CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile, perhaps the output from GKSGC, GRAFCORE, or NCARLIB graphics libraries)
• DLI (Display List Interactive)
• DVI (standard output from TeX)

After conversion, you can send the file to the current network printers (with LP, LPR, or APR, depending on where the files reside).

Software tools exist to convert each file format, including text to PostScript using ENSCRIPT. For example, ImageMagick is a popular open-source tool that converts most image files.

CRAY File Conversions

Using data files from CRAY or CDC machines on LC's IBM computers often requires that you run a conversion program that understands the older file formats. TRANS on LC's IBMs is one such conversion utility, while LFT is another. This section explains how to use TRANS (on IBMs) appropriately, and it refers you to LFT instructions elsewhere.

TRANS

In most cases, TRANS can convert text formats and it can also convert numeric values to the IEEE format used on the IBM machines as 8-byte real and integer values. (Note that TRANS cannot deal with real or integer values that do not occupy full words on the older machines. It cannot deal, for example, with byte arrays or bytes packed into structures.) Simple programs can be written to then further convert data to other formats (such as 4-byte integers or reals) as needed.

In many cases, TRANS can figure out what the format of an older file is on its own, but in some cases you must supply extra hints by using TRANS options. The chart below suggests for different source machines and operating systems which TRANS execute line and special options are most likely to work best for specific types of files. Once a file has been converted to IBM format by using TRANS, you can move it to other machines with FTP, and FTP will automatically handle any further conversions needed.

For a complete list of all TRANS options (many now obsolete), see the MAN page for TRANS on any LC IBM machine or visit the TRANS Web page.

For files from a CRAY running LTSS, NLTSS, or CTSS

Text editor output,

Fortran sequential formatted write (and namelist and list directed),

Fortran sequential unformatted write,

Fortran direct access formatted write,

Fortran direct access unformatted write,

Fortran two-argument buffer out to a file connected for unformatted I/O,

..........use this TRANS line:

trans -i infile -o outfile

Fortran two-argument buffer out to a file connected for formatted I/O,

Fortran three-argument buffer out,

..........use this TRANS line:

trans -i infile -o outfile abs

For files from a CRAY running UNICOS

Text editor output,

Fortran sequential formatted write (and namelist and list directed),

Fortran direct access formatted write,

Fortran direct access unformatted write of character data,

..........use this TRANS line:

[NO translation needed here]

Fortran sequential unformatted write of numeric data,

Fortran two-argument buffer out to file connected for unformatted I/O,

..........use this TRANS line:

trans -i infile -o outfile

Fortran direct access unformatted write of numeric data,

Fortran two-argument buffer out to a file connected for formatted I/O,

Fortran three-argument buffer out,

..........use this TRANS line:

trans -i infile -o outfile abs

Fortran sequential unformatted write of character data,

..........use this TRANS line:

trans -i infile,cos -o outfile

For files from a CDC 7600 or CDC 6600

Most text editor output,

Fortran sequential formatted write (and namelist and list directed),

Fortran sequential unformatted write,

Fortran direct access formatted write,

Fortran two-argument buffer out,

..........use this TRANS line:

trans -i infile,7600 -o outfile

TRIX Red output,

..........use this TRANS line:

trans -i infile,7600,red -o outfile

Fortran direct access unformatted write,

Fortran three-argument buffer out,

..........use this TRANS line:

trans -i infile,7600 -o outfile abs

LFT

Unlike IBM's TRANS, LFT ("list file types") was written at LC to help manage CRAY and CDC 7600 legacy files. LFT (on all LC production machines) reports and, if you request, converts to UNIX format all specified CRAY and CDC 7600 text files (but leaves all other formats unchanged). See the "Tools for Obsolete File Types" section of Using LC Files Systems for details on LFT and the related tool LIB76.