User`s guide

Chapter 3:Introduction
PShop User’s Guide - 3
PShop Components
The PShop package is made up of various components that fit together to
comprise a whole system. In effect, these components coordinate an entire
printing operation from the point at which a print job is submitted via the user
GUI or a command line invocation all the way through to delivering the proper
data in a printer’s required protocol.
Submitting print jobs to the system print queue(s)
lpr (BSD), lp (System 5), or vvlpr (all operating systems) can be entered on
the user’s command line or submitted via a system call from another program.
These commands enter a job into the printer’s queue.
vvlpr is a useful front end for lpr and lp, offering much more control of the
print job’s appearance and treatment. The
vvlpr parameters are the same as
vvprint’s parameters and are embedded within each print job when it is sent to
the print queue. A full description of the vvlpr/vvprint options are provided
elsewhere in this manual. Please refer to the appropriate section “Appendix A:
vvprint/vvlpr Commands & Parameters” on page 21. If you use
lpr or lp, you
will only have their options available to control your print job.
The supported file types that can be processed with any of the above methods
include TIFF, EPSI, Sun Raster, GIF, JPEG, X11 bitmaps, EPSF, PDF, PostScript
jobs, as well as ASCII plain text files or other user-defined types.
Monitoring the print queue(s)
Many methods are provided by the operating system to monitor and control the
print queues’ status. Examples are Sun’s
printtool command, the lpq and lpc
commands on BSD style print systems, and lpstat and lpadmin commands on
System 5 based print systems.
On BSD style systems, a daemon (program) called lpd supervises the system
print queues and processes the print jobs according to the /etc/printcap file (found
in the SunOS and DEC Alpha systems, for example). This file defines the queues
and specifies the name of the printer and the “if” filter script that is called to print
each job as it comes out of the queue. Such filters are an integral part of PShop.
For extra background, you may refer to any of the various system administration
reference guides on creating and managing printers in the UNIX environment.