Specifications

1-5
Printing Overview
real printer
The printer hardware attached to a serial or parallel port at a unique hardware device
address. The printer device driver in the kernel communicates with the printer
hardware and provides an interface between the printer hardware and a virtual
printer.
A real printer can be added with the Web–based System Manager (type wsm, and
then select Printers ) or with the mkdev command at the command line.
remote printer
A printer that is not directly attached to a local system. A remote print
system allows nodes that are not directly linked to a printer to have printer
access.
To use remote printing facilities, the individual nodes must be connected to a network
using Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and must support the
required TCP/IP applications.
serial printer
A printer that performs functions sequentially, such as printing one
character at a time.
Serial printers are normally configured as DTEs; that is, they expect to receive data
on the receive data line and transmit data on the transmit data line. Serial printers
default to EIA–232 connections and use DB–25 D–type connectors. Many printers
also support EIA–422 connections.
virtual printer
Also called a virtual printer definition, this is a file containing a set of
attribute values that describe a particular data stream (such as ASCII or
PostScript) for a particular printer. This does not include information about
how the printer hardware is attached to the host computer or about the
protocol used for transferring bytes of data to and from the printer. A virtual
printer is associated with a print queue. You can define a print queue for
each data stream the printer supports. Multiple print queues can use the
same real printer.
Before a print job can be placed in a queue, a virtual printer definition must exist for
both the print queue and the queue device. For more information, see the mkvirprt
command.