Linux Printing

When working on one of the Sociology computational servers (verstehen or paradigm) or the login server (anomie), printing is done to one of the department network printers.

Three general purpose laser printers, one color laser printer and the Ricoh copier are available for Linux printing, as indicated in the table below. Output is sent to a specific printer by directing it to the queue associated with that printer. Please use the color printer only when needed.

Department of Sociology Network Printers
Printer	Location	Details	Linux Print Queue Name
HP LaserJet 4250dtn	Room 135	Lab and 1st Floor - 45ppm, duplex, PostScript	lab
HP LaserJet P4015tn	Room 258	2nd Floor - 52ppm, duplex, PostScript	copy2 [default]
HP LaserJet 4100dtn	Room 330MR	3rd Floor - 25ppm, duplex, PostScript	copy3
HP Color LaserJet 4700dn	Room 268	Departmental color - 31ppm, duplex, PostScript [available only during regular business hours]	color
Ricoh Aficio MP 7500	Room 258	Departmental copier & high volume printer - 75ppm, duplex, hole punch, staple, collate	ricoh

Common printing tasks include:

Statistical output printed from interactive programming sessions
Files printed with lpr and enscript commands
Email messages printed from the Pine email program

The Default Print Queue

The default Linux print queue is copy2, which directs output to the LaserJet P4015tn printer located in the second floor copy room. You can set a personal default with the lpoptions command, which writes a setting to the .lpoptions file located in your home directory. The example below sets a personal default to the lab print queue.

```
$ lpoptions -d lab
 
```

Printing with the lpr Command

The lpr (line printer requester) command is used to send output to the default or to a designated print queue. Commonly lpr receives a specified file as input, but can also accept standard input piped to it from another command. The following examples clarify:

Send a text file to the default print queue:
```
$ lpr note.txt
 
```
Send a text file to a designated print queue by including the -P argument with the queue name:
```
$ lpr -Plab note.txt
 
```
Prepare a PostScript formatted manual page for the Linux cat command and pipe it as input to lpr for a printed copy. This technique will produce printed documentation for any Linux command with an existing manual page.
```
$ man -t cat | lpr
 
```

The lpr command sends output without altering it. If the file is text, then text is printed. Graphical and PostScript files are handed off as such, leaving the task of formatting them to the printer.

Printing with the enscript Command

The enscript command is used to convert text into PostScript formatted output, which is then directed to a print queue. This allows for labelling, indentation, font control, landscape printing, multi-column printing, duplex printing and other variations that add to the flexibility and convenience of output preparation. Output from interactive Linux SAS sessions, for example, prints using enscript landscape, 2-column printing. The following table illustrates typical uses of enscript.

Command	Description
$ enscript note.txt	Direct named file to the default queue. Each page of output will have a bold header containing the filename, the date, the time and a page number
$ enscript -Pcopy3 note.txt	Direct named file to the copy3 print queue
$ enscript -n2 note.txt	Direct that two copies of the named file be printed
$ enscript -i8 note.txt	Print the named file with left indentation 8 characters more than normal
$ enscript -G note.txt	Print the named file with fancy headers
$ enscript -B note.txt	Print the named file without headers
$ enscript -r note.txt	Print the named file in landscape mode
$ enscript -2r note.txt	Print the named file in landscape mode with two columns per page
$ enscript -2rG -Plab note.txt	Direct the named file with fancy headers in landscape, 2-column mode to the lab print queue
$ enscript -2rG logit.log logit.lst	Print multiple files with one enscript command [i.e.; a set of SAS program and output logs]
$ enscript -fTimes-Roman9 note.txt	Print the named file using Times-Roman, 9-point font
$ enscript -a 4-7 codebook.txt	Print pages 4-7 of the named file
$ enscript -a -9 codebook.txt	Print the first through 9th pages of the named file
$ enscript -a 6- codebook.txt	Print the 6th through the last pages of the named file
$ enscript -a odd codebook.txt	Print the odd pages of the named file
$ enscript -a even codebook.txt	Print the even pages of the named file

The default font for portrait printing is Courier 10 point (a mono-spaced font where each character occupies the same amount of space). The default for landscape, two column (-2r) printing is Courier 7 point.

You may combine several of the above options to produce highly tailored printing effects. For a full discussion of enscript, see the enscript man page.

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