This cannot be this hard. Trying to setup a printer so that when a user submits a job to a printer, it comes out printed landscape. I spoke with GSC about this and they said as long as I can get the printer to print how I want it from the command line, that Lawson just cat's or passes the print command through.

Well, I can get the report printed in landscape, but the font is too big. Complains when I try to do condensed or smaller pitch. We are running AIX 5.2, printer is setup with the HP LJ 4 driver (actual printer is a LJ 3700) and is connected via HP JetDirect. I have tried setting the queue up directly to the JetDirect box and through a Windows print server, with the settings of that printer defaulted to landscape. I have tried lpr, lp and qprt, with no luck. The closest I come is with qprt using -z to rotate it, but cannot get the font/pitch small enough so that it fits on the page.

I know this cannot be this hard....can anyone lend me a hand here????? Thanks!!

BTW - we are defaulting to PDF landscape....

GaryJ

I assume you are using 'qprt -K +' ?

Send us your current setup string so we can play with it.

The closest I got was with the following:

qprt -Pgarytest -z1 -K+ /path to filename /etc/hosts or whatever.

This prints landscape, but not compressed, through a Windows print server. If I just send that command to a queue pointed directly at the JetDirect card, it never does print...I swear before it was throwing some error complaining that the printer or file type didn't support that option.

Hmmm.. if qprt isn't doing it for you maybe you should try lp

As I remember (and it's been a while) it's something like this:
lp -dprintername -landscape -o compressed /path/to/filename
(or maybe it's -o c for compressed)

Dave:

I tried the lp command above and it prints landscape, but not compressed. I will play around a bit more. Thanks for the suggestions.

Gary

We are running EPIC here as well, which uses UNIX backend printing like this. All we have to do is run lpr -l -Pqueuename and it works like a charm. No messing with landscape, no messing with compressed. I am not sure why the Lawson stuff is so different. EPIC is running on an AIX 5.3 box vs AIX 5.2, but I can't believe lpr or the print subsystem would be THAT dramatically different between the two. Come on, this is UNIX. he he!

Try the same thing with your lawson setup. All Lawson does is pass a raw data stream to whatever Unix command you add to prtdef. it's essentially:

cat filename | 'whatever you put in prtdef'

so the problem is outside Lawson in your printing subsystem or it's configuration (or drivers)

Dave:

I realize this is something outside of Lawson. I was hoping someone else had run into this or was successfully printing landscape so they could say, yep, we are running lpr -l -P and it works great. I have downloaded a Redbook from IBM and am working through some of the suggestions in there. If worse comes to worse, I will call IBM and see if they can't help figure it out. I hate doing that though....kind of admits defeat on something that should be pretty simple.....

Thanks for your help and suggestions though.

Gary

Dave:

Well, an update. I got it working in a roundabout way, but it isn't pretty. I am using qprt -Pqueuename -z1 to get the output to print landscape. I then did a smit chpq and selected the queuename and then set the Typestyle and Pitch to Courier 17 under the Default Print Job Attributes page to get all of the text to fit on the page width-wise. I guess it works. Not elegant, but it works, kind of like duct tape. The users aren't too thrilled that is doesn't look like the pretty PDF document they see on their screen, but I don't think I can accomplish that through backend printing...if they want that, they will have to run the job and then manually print it from their print files to a front end printer.

Gary