Technical data

LPD Printing

DCPS now supports printing with the LPD protocol. This chapter explains how

to set up a DCPS LPD queue and contains additional information about using

DCPS over LPD.

2.1 LPD Restrictions

Because the LPD protocol is uni-directional, as opposed to the other protocols

used by DCPS which are bi-directional, there are some restrictions to its use:

• The printer cannot return printer messages that occur during the printing

of your job, so DCPS cannot report them. For example, you will not receive

messages about paper jams or empty trays.

• The printer cannot report its current state to DCPS. Therefore, checks that

DCPS performs to ensure your job is printed correctly cannot be performed.

For example, if you specify paper size and input tray for your print job, and

the speciﬁed paper size is not loaded in the speciﬁed tray, your job may print

from either the wrong tray or on the wrong size paper. If the error causes a

PostScript error, you may see the error reported on the printer, but only if

PostScript error reporting has been enabled on the printer.

• DCPS LPD queues do not work with remote LPD queues, where print jobs

are sent to other systems instead of directly to a printer. This restriction may

be lifted in future DCPS versions.

2.2 Creating an LPD queue

To create a DCPS LPD queue, specify IP_LPD as the protocol in parameter P2 in

DCPS$STARTUP.COM:

$ IF .NOT. SETUP_MODE THEN @SYS$STARTUP:DCPS$EXECUTION_QUEUE -

queue_name - ! P1

"IP_LPD/printer_name_or_address" - ! P2

DCPS_LIB ! P3

For most printers, specifying the name or address of the printer is sufﬁcient for

LPD printing. However, some printers require an internal print queue name to

be used for LPD. If your printer requires an internal queue name to be speciﬁed,

do so after the printer name or address, separated by a colon:

$ IF .NOT. SETUP_MODE THEN @SYS$STARTUP:DCPS$EXECUTION_QUEUE -

queue_name - ! P1

"IP_LPD/printer_name_or_address:internal_name" - ! P2

DCPS_LIB ! P3

Check your printer’s documentation for the internal queue name required, if any,

for LPD printing. If your printer needs an internal queue name to be speciﬁed

and your DCPS LPD queue does not specify it, jobs sent to that queue will remain

LPD Printing 2–1