Printing Tips

Printing Tips For Public Printers

The Computer Center maintains a number of Xerox and Hewlitt-Packard networked printers for the department. You can better control the way your files on are printed on these printers using tips from this page.

Click here for a list of the printers, their locations and capabilities.
Click here for instructions for using the Xerox 7750G high-quality color laser printer (a per-page fee is charged).
Click here for instructions for using the Xerox Phaser 8200DP and 8400DP medium-quality color laser printers (no fees are being charged for now).

General Tips
Information for Windows PC users
Information for Macintosh users
Command-Line Options for UNIX users

This document primarily describes how to print from Computer Center-maintained UNIX computers. Users of other workgroup clusters and computer platforms may not see the same behavior.

General Tips

DUPLEX The printers are set to print in duplex mode (double-sided) by default to save paper (and money). See the computer-specific sections for ways to override the defaults.
DUPLEX LANDSCAPE When printing duplex, there are two alternative ways of orienting the second page in relation to the first. One, the default on our printers, is long-edge binding. This makes sense when the pages are printed in portrait mode. However, when using landscape mode jobs, you will probably want to specify short-edge binding. See the computer-specific sections for ways to override the defaults.
SPECIAL PAPER TYPES Do not print on any special paper types (e.g. envelopes, transparencies, labels). The chances are too high that someone will mess up a heavily-used public resource by melting a transparency or losing some labels on the internal rollers. Also, it is difficult to control who is printing when, so your special papers may very well wind up being used by someone else who sends a job before you are ready.
KNOW YOUR PRINTER Some of these options only make sense for printers equipped with paper trays dedicated to certain kinds of paper (such as legal). If you use these options on other printers, they will probably go into manual-feed mode, where they expect you to feed the next sheet in from Tray 1 (normally closed). In this state, they will not print other people's jobs until your job is finished!
MANUALS You will find a printer manual next to some of the printers. The User Guide for the Xerox printers (such as firstlp, thirdlp, and sixthlp) can be found on eta.pha.jhu.edu in /opt/Xerox/xpxx/UserGuide.pdf If you would like to borrow a manual, see Matt McGrievy or Jeffrey Tunison in room 439.
WEB PAGE INTERFACES You can see the current status and configurationof a number of our printers with a web browser. Just use the printer name as the URL, e.g. http://thirdlp.pha.jhu.edu.

Command-Line Options for UNIX users

Most programs on UNIX computers print by sending data through the standard UNIX built-in lp or lpr commands. You can change the way your document is printed by adding or changing the command-line options used by these programs.

Sometimes things get a bit complicated because those standard UNIX programs ultimately feed your print jobs into some Xerox-provided or Hewlitt-Packard printer driver programs (which can act differently according to the model of printer). So therefore you will find some options work only for some models.

This section describes some of the options available for the lp, psutils suite and gnuenscript programs. It tries to point out some of the differences between printer models we own.

LP VERSUS LPR -- TWO SETS OF COMMANDS

The UNIX operating system has two families of basic printing programs available: the standard ones from System V Release 4 (SVR4) UNIX, and for backwards-compatibility, those from Berkely (BSD) UNIX. (There are two main families of UNIX operating systems.) Try to use lp whenever possible. It accepts more options than lpr and is the standard in 2006. The table below indicates the SVR4 and BSD equivalent commands.

To...	SVR4 command	BSD command
Print	lp	*lpr*
Specify a particular printer	*lp -d printername*	*lpr -P printername*
Check the print queue	*lpstat -d printername*	*lpq -P printername*
Cancel a print job	*cancel*	*lprm*

LP OPTIONS

The following options are to be used with lp, NOT lpr!

When specifying multiple lp options, each one must be prefaced with a -o. You may put a space between the -o and the option. For example,
lp -d thirdlp -o simplex -o econoon filename1 filename2

To see all of the options supported by each of our Xerox models (Docuprint N2125, Phasers 8200, 8400, 7750 and 7760), issue a job with a special argument to the particular printer you want to use. The specified file won't be printed, but a list of the possible arguments will be printed instead.
lp -d firstlp -o Options filename1
lp -d fourthcolor -o Options filename1

To...	Use this argument
Specify a particular printer	*-d printername*
Print three copies:	*-n 3* (HP LaserJet) *-o Copies=3* (Xerox printers)
Force simplex (single-sided):	*-o simplex* (HP LaserJet) *-o NoDuplex* (Xerox printers)
Short-edge binding:	*-o vduplex* (HP LaserJet) *-o DuplexTumble* (Xerox printers)
Long-edge binding:	*-o hduplex* (HP LaserJet) *-o DuplexNoTumble* (Xerox printers)
Print in draft mode (saving toner):	*-o econoon* (HP LaserJet) *-o Draft* (Xerox printers)
Print in light mode (saving toner):	*-o tondensitylight* (HP LaserJet)
Print in high-resolution mode (at reduced speed):	*-o dpi12pro* (HP LaserJet; only some models) *-o 1200x1200dpi* (Xerox printers)
Print on legal paper:	*-o legal* filename (HP LaserJet) *-o Legal* (Xerox printers)
Print on letterhead paper:	*-o mtypeLetterhead* (HP LaserJet) *-o Letterhead* (Xerox printers)
Print multiple pages (2, 4, 6 or 8 possible) on each physical page. For plain text files only, (i.e. not ones already preprocessed into PostScript by Gnuenscript or psutils etc).	*-o Nup2* (Xerox printers) *-o Nup4* (Xerox printers) *-o Nup6* (Xerox printers) *-o Nup8* (Xerox printers)

GNUENSCRIPT OPTIONS

Gnuenscript (or enscript on Linux computers) has many, many useful options. However, we have not yet found a way to pass some of those options mentioned above to the printer via gnuenscript, as using --printer-options=hduplex did not work as the manual page would have you believe.

To...	Use this argument
Specify a particular printer	*-P printername*
Rotate to landscape mode and print two columns	*-2r*
To force simplex (single-sided):	*-DDuplex:false*

PSUTILS OPTIONS

PSutils is an extremely useful set of programs and scripts for manipulating Postscript. Here is a list of utilities:

psselect Selects pages and page ranges
pstops Performs general page rearrangement and selection
psnup Put multiple pages per physical sheet of paper (2, 4, 9, etc)
psresize Alter document paper size (e.g., convert A4 to letter)
epsffit Fits an EPSF file to a given bounding box

psmerge Filter to merge several PostScript files into one

psbook Rearranges pages into signatures

To...	Use this argument
Convert from A4 to letter	*psresize -PA4 -pletter infile.ps outfile.ps*
Print 4 pages on one sheet	*psnup -p letter -4 infile.ps \| lp -*
Create a new PS file with selected pages from an input file	*psselect -p1,3,6,20-25 infile.ps outfile.ps*
Merge several files into a new file	*psmerge -ooutfile.ps file1.ps file2.ps*

PSutils also has a number of scripts to convert PS output from various platforms/software to more standard PS format:
getafm fixdlsrps fixfmps fixmacps fixpsditps fixpspps fixscribeps
fixtpps fixwfwps fixwpps fixwwps extractres includeres

Information for Macintosh users

The following instructions for setting up a Xerox Phaser 7760 were contributed by Alex Framarini of ACS. These instructions can be used in most cases for setting up other models of printer for Mac OS X. Please just substitute the correct printer model. Also, for many models, the drivers will already be available from the OS install so the step for downloading the driver can often be skipped.

To add a Xerox Phaser 7760GX, follow these steps:

Step 1) Download and install the driver:

Download the Xerox Phaser 7760 Driver Installer Package from http://www.xerox.com (The 7760_installer_enu.dmg file will appear on your desktop)
Double Click on the file (a Disk Image will appear and the Finder should open).
Drag the Phaser_7760_Installer_enu icon onto the Desktop
Double Click on the icon (and installation will appear)
At the "Authenticate" screen, enter admin's password
The "Phaser 7760 Install" will appear
Click the Continue button (three times and License Agreement will appear)
For the License Agreement, Click the Agree button For Installation Type, we want to change from Easy Install to Custom Install
To change, Click the "Easy Install" bar and select "Custom Install"
Next, uncheck "Xerox Support Centre"
Click the Install button
*** Do NOT enable PrintingScout ***
*** Do NOT register at the website ***
Click the Quit button

Step 2) Install the printer queue

Start the "Printer Setup Utility" (Macintosh HD-->Applications-->Utilities-->Printer Setup Utility)
Click on the IP Printer Icon
- Protocol: Line Printer Daemon - LPD
- Address: ccprint.pha.jhu.edu
- Queue: secondlp (for example)
- Name: secondlp (for example)
- Print Using: Xerox Phaser 7760GX If the correct model isn't found because you don't have the driver, then you can specify Generic Postscript driver and most things will work, but if they do not, then you will need to download and install the correct printer driver.
Click the Add button
At the "Installable Options", click the Continue button
Click the "Make Default" icon if you desire

About printer drivers on Mac OS X:

Note: the following text is under construction. take with a grain of salt.

To make use of all of the features of any printer, such as the ability to print duplex or on tabloid-sized paper, you need to install Postscript Printer Description files, called PPD's.

Current versions (i.e. 10.4) of Mac OS include many printer definitions, so often you do not have to download anything to get started. You can download the printer driver from the manufacturer's web site.

You can download these from the printer's manufacturer's web site. After installation, you may need to configure them, and then also create "desktop printer" aliases. For example, the Xerox N2125 printer driver does not always automatically find out which "installable options" a particular printer has (such as duplexer or extra paper trays). So you have to manually go in and make that change.

Note that you can create multiple "desktop printers" for the same physical printer. The reason to do this is to be able to quickly select different options (duplex? letterhead paper?) by choosing a different "printer".

There is a "Save settings" button in the bottom left corner of print dialog boxes. You need to press that after making changes to the configuration (such as choosing duplex) so they will be retained for future use (not used only on that particular print job).

Information for Windows PC users

Configuring your Windows PC to use the department printers.

psselect	Selects pages and page ranges
pstops	Performs general page rearrangement and selection
psnup	Put multiple pages per physical sheet of paper (2, 4, 9, etc)
psresize	Alter document paper size (e.g., convert A4 to letter)
epsffit	Fits an EPSF file to a given bounding box
psmerge	Filter to merge several PostScript files into one
psbook	Rearranges pages into signatures