Specifications

1-1
Printing Overview
Chapter 1. Printing Overview
Printing in AIX offers a myriad of configuration and setup options. Depending on the printer,
you can control the appearance and characteristics of the final output. The printers need not
be located in the same area as the system unit and the system console. A printer can be
attached directly to a local system, or a print job can be sent over a network to a remote
system.
To handle print jobs with maximum efficiency, the system places each job into a queue to
await printer availability. The system can save output from one or more files in the queue.
As the printer produces the output from one file, the system processes the next job in the
queue. This process continues until each job in the queue has been printed.
This chapter discusses the following topics:
• Printing terminology on page 1-2
• Starting a print job (qprt command) on page 1-6
• Canceling a print job (qcan command) on page 1-11
• Prioritizing a print job (qpri command) on page 1-12
• Moving a print job to another print queue (qmov command) on page 1-13
• Holding and releasing a print job (qhld command) on page 1-14
• Checking print job status (qchk command) on page 1-15
• Formatting files for printing (pr command) on page 1-17
• Printing ASCII files on a PostScript printer on page 1-19
• Command summary for printing on page 1-23